LIVING WITHOUT FOOD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4645, 7 January 1924, Page 2

LIVING WITHOUT FOOD.

DIET OF "HOPE AND WATER.”

Surprise lias been expressed that the men rescued from the flooded pit near Falkirk (Scotland) were able to exist for nine days on “hope and • water,” In point of fact, it was jusc -. because these men had fresh watt? 1 and did not abandon hope that thev | not only survived their horrible im- ! prisonment, but were actually able to crawl down to the shaft bottom unaided to join their rescuers. For a healthy man a nine days’ fast is, in itself, no very dreadful ordeal j (Jsays a correspondent in the V Mail). There are -indeed plenty of y people who habitually fast at inter- . vals for from three to seven days, fy simply for health’s sake. The survi.ois from the Medusa, wrecked in the year 1876. managed to live through 13 days on a raft, without food or water, exposed, too, for much - of the time to a burning sun. Of miners, the longest entombment of i which we have any record is that of J the last survivor from the Courrieres mine in France, after the awful ex- | plosion of March 6, 190'6. He was, hi i all, 26 days below ground before be- ; ing rescued. But he had food for the i fir- t week of his imprisonment. Doctors are divided as to how long a • man can exist without food. Professional fasters, such as Dr. Tanner and Succi, have abstained for 40, er i even 50, days on end, and there is a case reported in the Lancet of 1853 of a man of 62 who refused food for four months, and recovered. The period of fasting before death ensues varies with different individual’. . Generally speaking, a healthy person. i can go without food until he or she , ha< lost one-third of the bodily !‘J weight. Succi, for instance, lost 341 b 3oz during a 40 days’ fast, but } <s| Jacques, the champion faster, lost. *' onl.u 281 b 4oz in the course of his days’ record fast. Medical juris-' prudence assumes that a fat person" 3 will live longer without food than a -1 thin one. for, like the hibernating - a bear, a fasting man consumes his own fat. The muscles, too, lotee much j weight; even the skin and hair de-.. crease in weight during a fast. The only part of the body which loses nOr thing is the heart. ’ | ■ -iliao