136 



ON THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION, &c. 



intelligent committee was at length arranged, and assented to by the woman 

 herself, for the purpose of watching her by day and by night. Cut off 

 hereby altogether from fluids, which she had of late pretended to relinquish, 

 as well as from solids, she was hardly able to reach the tenth day, and still 

 less to confess, as she then did, that she had occasionally been supplied by 

 her daughter with water and tea. " On the whole," the committee conclude, 

 in their account of her, " though this woman is a base impostor with respect 

 to her pretence of total abstinence from all food whatever, liquid or solid, yet 

 she can perhaps endure the privation of solid food longer than any other per- 

 son. It is thought by those best acquainted with her, that she existed on a 

 mere trifle, and that from hence came the temptation to say that she did not 

 take any thing. If, therefore, any of her friends could have conveyed a bottle 

 of water to her, unseen by the watch, and she could occasionally have drunk 

 out of it, little doubt is entertained that she would have gone through the 

 month's trial with credit. The daughter says that her mother's principal food 

 is tea, and there is reason to believe this to be true."* But this opinion 

 leaves the case almost as extraordinary as before the detection of the fraud ; 

 for if true, and it is greatly borne out by the fact to which it appeals, this 

 woman was capable of subsisting on what is ordinarily regarded as no nutri- 

 ment whatever, and required nothing more for her support than an occasional 

 draught of pure water. 



Hildanus, Haller, and other physiologists have collected various instances 

 of a similar kind : many of them of a much longer duration of abstinence ; 

 some of them, indeed, extending to not less than sixteen years ; but in gene- 

 ral too loosely written and attested to be entitled to full reliance. \ et the 

 Philosophical Transactions in their different volumes contain numerous cases 

 of the same kind, apparently drawn up with the most scrupulous caution, and 

 supported by the best kind of concurrent evidence. In one of the earlier 

 volumes! we meet with an account of four men who were compelled to sub- 

 sist upon water alone for twenty-four days, in consequence of their havmg 

 been buried in a deep excavation by the fall of a superincumbent stratum of 

 earth under which they were working, and it being this length of time before 

 they were extricated. The water which they drank of was from a spring at 

 hand ; and they drank of it freely, but tasted nothing else. 



A still more extraordinary account is recorded in the same journal for the 

 year 1742, and consists of the history of a young man, who, at the age of six- 

 teen or seventeen, from having drunk very freely of cold water when in a 

 violent perspiration, was thrown into an inflammatory fever, from which he 

 escaped with difficulty, and with such a dislike to foods of all kinds, that for 

 eighteen years, at the time this account was drawn up, he had never tasted 

 any thing but water. The fact was well known throughout the neighbour- 

 hood ; but an imposition having been suspected by several persons who saw 

 him, he had been shut up at times in close confinement for twenty days at a 

 trial, with the most scrupulous care that he should communicate with nothing 

 but water. He uniformly enjoyed good health, and appears to have had ejec- 

 tions, but seldom. 



A multitude of hypotheses have been offered to account for these wonder- 

 ful anomalies, but none of them do it satisfactorily ; and I should be unworthy 

 of the confidence you repose in me, if I did not ingenuously confess my utter 

 ignorance upon the subject. Water in most cases appears to have been abso- 

 lutely necessary, yet not in all ; for Hildanus, who, though somewhat imagi- 

 native, appears to have been an honest and an able man in the main, assures 

 us, that Eva Flegen, who had fasted for sixteen years when he saw her in 1612, 

 had abstained entirely from liquids as well as solids : and in the case of im- 

 pacted toads, especially those found in blocks of closely crystallized marble, 

 the moisture they receive must often be very insignificant. 



• A Full Exposure of Ann Moore, the pretended Fasting Woman of Tutbury, 8vo. 1813. 

 The newspapers have informed us that this poor woman died at Maccle&field about the beginning of 

 October, 1825, at the advanced age of seventy-six. • 

 tPhU. Trans. 1684. 



