iS8o.] 
Correspondence, 
599 
ABSTENTION FROM FLUIDS, 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science, 
Sir, — The question of the power of the human frame to endure 
fasting from solids, as exemplified in the case of Dr. Tanner, 
U.S., he taking only fluids in small quantities, is now amusing 
the scientific world. Accepting, in good faith, the experiment 
so for as the trial and his recovery has proceeded, we have on 
record the facft that man has the power of fasting for forty days 
without vital injury. The case of the convidt at Cusana (re- 
ported in the Paris News in the ‘ Times,’ August ioth, 1880), 
who starved himself, is in evidence.* He abstained from fluids 
and solids, and did not succumb until thirty days. 
A case (for a long time) within my knowledge, the details of 
which are below, of a labouring man who abstained from taking 
fluids of any kind for two periods, — one of five and one of seven’ 
months, — appears to me of practical importance, especially in a 
military point of view, in cases where water is unattainable. 
C — P — , in the peasant condition of life, a great advocate of 
the Temperance movement, in a moment of excitement upon 
the subject, maintained that not only could a man abstain from 
beer and alcoholic drinks, but that the drinking of any fluid was 
totally needless, and that life and strength could both be preserved 
without the imbibition of any fluid, provided suitable food, of a 
commonplace character, could be procured ; and that he in his 
own person would prove it. 
C. P. is a labouring man (almost uneducated), but of an en- 
quiring mind. The basis on which he built his theory was that 
all substances contain more or less of water, and thus the ques- 
tion was one of the selection of the food ; and when the proper 
selection of a common and easily attainable produdt was used, 
fluids were quite unnecessary to support life and to engender the 
energy needed in a laborious occupation. At the time, and some 
years before he entered upon his experiments, I should say that 
he was not only a teetotaller, but a vegetarian also. 
On his first trial (five months) he fed wholly upon potatoes 
and butter, taking three meals a day, consisting (each meal) of 
three and a half pounds of potatoes, boiled and mashed with 
two ounces of butter : during this period he took no fluid of any 
kind, and only ended the probation when it became impossible 
for him to obtain potatoes in a fitting state. He then went on 
* A mason, aged 26, condemned to four years’ imprisonment at Cusano, has 
starved himself to death. From the day of his sentence he refused to take 
food, and, no compulsion being resorted to, he died at the end of thirty days. 
His funeral was purely civil, the priests considering him a suicide. 
