Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-07-18

amount of force. These great functions are
the maintenance of the nervous system, the
blood circulation, respiration, and animal
heat. As to the latter it requires very little to
keep that up this hot weather. Everybody
is familiar with the force stored up In
pound of gunpowper, for instance. Well,
the food that this man is receiving contains
about 400 times as much force, pound Tor
pound, as gunpowder does"
s'That must be strong kind of food.
SIT may seem so, but it isn't. DIR. Tanner
has, during his sixteen days. fast, consumed,
at rough calculation, about twelve or tif-
teen pounds of it.''
''And no one, not even the psychologists,
have detected it?"
SIT seems so, and yet the process is as
plain as daylight
"Won't you make it plain to me!'
"With pleasure. First, though, | must
explain to you that the popular idea as to
the spangs of hunger and the cravings of
the stomach are all at sea. hear persons
say, Goodness graciousn if 1 get SO hungry
when l have gone without food for
eight hours, what must be the torture OF
this man who has not eaten for more than
two weeks. They cannot understand the
fact that the stomach, having been
'cernered,' as DR.. Tanner calls it, ceases
its urgent demands for replenishment, and
that the body then begins to call upon its
stored. up forces for sustenance. DIR. Tan
ner, at the beginning of his fast, weighed
1871 pounds. To-day he weighs only 132.
What has become of the lost 2512 pounds!
Most of it has been consumed by him.
calculate roughly that he has consumed a
pound of fat each day. That would amount
to sixteen pounds, quantity in which there
was stored up enough force to propel loco
motive hundreds of miles,"
':And this is the way in which he has been
fed?"
'Certainly."
"Are you of the opinion that the only way
in which he has received food during these
sixteen days is by taking it from his own
body?"
81 have watched him every day, and L am
so certain of it that would bet my life
against dollar bill. Why, for the man to
take food in the ordinary way at this or any
other stage of the fast would be certain de-
feat, and might result in death. The intro
duction of a single mouthful of food at this
time, for instance, would arouse the stomach
from its torpor, and the five days battle
fought in conquering it would have to be
fought over again. He is now living en-
tirely upon his own body, as any per
son IN health might do if he only knew it. y
s'Do you think he can live in that way for
forty days ?'
81 think he might easily under favorable
circumstances. But the surroundings this
time have been most unfavorable. The
nervous system, which requires more
force (or food) than anything else,
should have been kept as quiet as pos
sible. Instead of that, the man has not
only gone through the ordinary processes of
thinking, but he has been subjected to
Thousand and one needless annoyances
which, as the chemical analyses show, have
drawn largely on his nerve force. If DR..
Tanner should stop now, and feed up till he
weighed 1S0 pounds, his ordinary weight,
and should then undertake to fast under the
most favorable conditions, such as absolute
quiet of all the voluntary forces of mind and
muscle, see no reason why he should not
hold out, not for forty days only, but for a
much longer time"
"Would he still have need of water?"
"Certainly. Not, however, as food, but
simply to keep the blood vessels filled and
thus furnish a vehicle for conveying the
blood corpuscles to their proper destination,
and thus maintain the phenomena of life. "