282 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
ration 14; thirty-seventh day—weight 12514, pulse 74, temperature 983°, res- 
piration 14; thirty-eighth day—weight 123%, pulse 78, temperature 99°, 
respiration 15; thirty-ninth day—weight 12214, pulse 91, temperature 97°, res- 
piration 13; fortieth day—weight 122, pulse 92, temperature 99°, respiration 17. 
Thus terminated one of the most complete and satisfactory tests of human 
endurance ever witnessed, for though many cases have been reported in which 
abstinence from food has been protracted even beyond this, still there have been 
in none of them so strict a watch kept or so accurate tests made. As has b-en said 
by a well known writer: ‘‘The question of fasting is one of physiology. It is 
best explained by an examination into the nature of those animals that indulge in 
hibernation, as it is termed, almost, as it would seem, by instinct. The term 
means ‘ wintering,’ but hibernation is practiced by certain creatures as much in 
summer as in winter. It would appear to be a plan devised by nature to enable 
animals that cannot change their oca/e readily with the changing seasons, to exist 
without food during the periods unpropitious to their obtaining it. Bears, bats, 
hedgehogs, the dormouse, water rats and certain insects are all addicted to this 
practice, but not alone in winter. The bat hibernates once every twenty-four 
hours, exhibiting all the customary phenomena of the condition. Not to be too 
scientific, it may be said that these include respiration and augmented irritability 
as attendant factors. Birds have high respiration and little irritability; reptiles are 
the reverse in this. In structural changes—as from the egg to the bird, the tad- 
pole to the batrachian and the larva to the chrysalis and insect—respiration is aug- 
mented; in physiological changes, as in sleep and hibernation, it is lessened. 
In winter the swallow and bat migrate to warm regions, while the insects— 
their natural prey—sink into a deep sleep through the season of cold and famine. 
With those animals that hibernate the question of fasting is necessarily involved 
with that of sleep. Yet there have been instances in which the latter condition 
was not certainly prominent. The capacity for existing without food would ap- 
pear to depend on the ability of the heart to carry on the circulation of the blood 
without regard to the arteries. The blood in that case is venous and not oxygen- 
ated. In hibernation disintegration and waste of the tissues progress very slowly, 
and the animal is enabled to live on the slow consumption of its own tissues. 
Bears that come out after hibernation are found to be wasted greatly from this 
cause, and it is considered a positive evidence against the faster in cases of long 
abstinence from food being pretended, if he do not display this waste of his su- 
perabundant fat. It is, therefore, obvious that this condition of inactivity and 
that of a high temperature are of advantage to the voluntary faster. The con- 
sumption of tissue goes on less rapidly under those circumstances, and he is ena- 
bled to utilize the waste for the sustenance of his own life.” 
The period of forty days seems to have been regarded in Biblical times as 
within the possibilities, although evidently far beyond any custom or requirement 
of the Mosaic law. Moses, on Mt. Sinai, and after his descent therefrom, Elijah 
on Mt. Horeb, Jesus in the Wilderness, are marked instances of fasts of this du- 
