The End of Sucei's Fast.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 483, 25 June 1890, Page 6

The End of Sucei's Fast.

Signor Succi, at three o’clock in the after, noon, successfully accomplished his feast of fasting forty days at the Westminster Aquarium. He continued his reception for an hour and a half longer, when he went to the stage in the Great Hall, and received a gold medal from the chairman of the directers. The crowd of people which had gathered in order to witness the proceedings was very great, and Sueci was again and again enthusiastically cheered. Succi having, through his agent Mr Ellis, thanked the British public for the interest they had shown, came to the front with a silver basin filled with steaming bouillon, and, preparing to commence his meal, raised his basin ‘ To the glory of Old England.’ Everybody had expected him to commence with a spoonful or two at most. Bub Succi plied his spoon vigorously, taking about half a tumbler in quantity with visible enjoyment. After a sherb pause he took a basin of peptone of beef, raising that ‘To the King of Italy,’ and when "he had finished he smilingly burned to the audience, saying, ‘lb is very good for for tv dajs." The proceedings occupied fully twenty minutes, and during the whole of the time Succi remained standing or walking about. On their conclusion, he returned to his reception-room, and received visitors until the closing time of the Aquarium.

Succi during his forty days’ fast had lost 341 b 3oz in weight. At the usual examination hour, Succi had already well begun his recuperative progress. He had nob then risen ; but his face had lost its cadaverous aspect and its colour was improved. His spirits were vivacious. He had taken 6£oz —a whole bottle —of Bouillon Fleet, of peptone of beef, of rizine—a farinaceous food—and three Tangerine oranges. He had also taken a pint and a-half of water. He had already gained 11b in weight. In an interview afterwards, Signor Succi said he was doing well, and had had no pains nor inconvenience whatever. His hands were warm and the skin soft. He left the Aquarium at two o clock, and drove to his residence, about a mile away, in a cab. He is greatly pulled down, and says that he will not again attempt a forty days’ fast, but will more probably return altogether to his former ways of commercial business. There is a degree of scientific interest about such experiments as the fast which has just reached its close at the Aquarium (the ‘Lancet’ says). It is no doubt instructive bo note the decline or the disturbance of physical processes which marks the steady ebb of a starved life. Interest, however, and that of a kind allied to curiosity, is almost, if not quite, the only gain. There is little or no practical utility in such observations, since the results attainable by them, unless we except that of merely registering the limit of human endurance, are and have been arrived at by investigations carried out on the lower animals. We candidly confess, therefore, that such exhibitions a 3 this appear to us, even on physiological grounds, to be needless and inadvisable. The risk of a fatal issue, or of permanent injury to health, is too serious to be lightly undertaken. When we find it, as in the present case, wilfully encountered for the entertainment of a general assemblage of sightseers, and for the mere sake of gain, we hardly know which is the more blameworthy, the wanton sufferer or the callous onlookers who countenance his folly. It is time that we saw the last of this dangerous pastime, which will soon, we hope, have found its true place among the discarded eccentricities of a depraved public taste. A correspondent calls attention to the fact that Hone’s ‘ Every Day Book ’ contains the following biographical memoranda ‘ln the year 1539 there lived in Scotland one John Scott, no way commended for his learning, for he had none, nor for his good qualities, which were as few. This man, being overthrown in-a 3uit of law, and knowing himself unable to pay that wherein he was adjudged.took sanctuary in the abbey of Holyrood House, where, out of discontent, he abstained from all meat and drink by the space of thirty or forty days together. Fame having spread this abroad, the King would have it put to trial, and to that effect shut him up in a private room within the Castle of Edinburgh, whereunto no man had access. He caused a little water and bread to be set by him, which he was found not to have diminished at the end of thirty days and two. Upon this he was dismissed, and, after a short time, he went to Rome, where he gave the like proof of fasting to Pope Clement VII., from whence he went to Venice, carrying with him a testimony of his long fasting under the Pope’s seal, and there also he gave the like proof thereof. Aftor long time, returning into England, he went up into the pulpit of St. Paul’s Churchyard, where he gave forth many speeches against the divorce of King Henry VIII. from his Queen Katherine, inveighing bitterly against him for his defection from the see of Rome ; whereupon he was thrust into prison, where he continued fasting for the space of fifty days. What his end was I read not.’