The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1880-02-12
CAN PEOPLE 1--we WITHOUT FOOp :
Some Remarkable Cases of Long Contin-
ued Fasting, Together with Several Curl
GUS ImpOstures in the Same Line.

ued Fasting, Together with Several Curl
Gus ImpOstures in the Same Line.
From the New Yorld World
DIR. William A. Hammond, in his in
teresting little volume on Fasting
Girls" did not by any means exhaust
the subject to which attention was at
tracted last year by the case of Molly
Fancher, and in which renewed interest
will now be taken because of the pro-
pOsal already noticed in these columns
of a physician in Minnesota to abstain
not only from medicine, which would be
less surprising, but from food for a long
period under conditions favorable to the
detection of any imposture. OF medieval
cases DIR. Hammond cites several. There
was Liduine of Schiedam, who fell Ill in
1898 and remained an invalid till her
death, 80 years later, and who, after liv-
ing for - years on piece of apple no
bigger than holy wafer, every day,
washed down with a little water, a
swallow of beer or a little sweet milk,
wound up finally by taking nothing
whatever in the shape of nUtriment for
IA years. There was st. Joseph of Co
pertinO, who kept seven 40-day fasts ev-
cry year, during which seasons he ate
only on Thursdays and Sundays, his
food even then being bitter herbs and
dried fruits. There was st. Nicolas of
Flue (nOt to be COMPOUNDED with St. Mich
Olas of the New York chimney who, as
he had embraced the mOnastic life, aban-
doned all food whatever save the Holy
Eucharist, which, according to the pious
CORES, so assimilated his grOsser being
to itself that, introduced into a superior
sphere, he lived exclusively by grace
and by heaven. There was the nun of
Leicester, in the thirteenth century, who
also lived on the Eucharist for seven
years; and there were those other holy
persons-Saint Peter of Alcantara, Saint
Rose of Lima, Saint Catharine of Sienna,
and Saint Collete-who also acquired
the power of living on the sacramental
bread. Fasting girls, says DIR. Ham
mOnd, came in with modern times, the
piOus abstinents having vanished with
the Ages of Faith. Margaret Weiss, ga
girl of ten, living near Spires, was ac-
credited with living for three years
without food or drink. She succeeded
in deceiving the parish priest and DIR.
Geraldus BuccOldinus, who watched her,
and the good doctor made cOnun-
drum out of her in his book narrating
her case: ''Why does the body grow
when nothing goes into it?'' ''AppO-
tOnia Schreira, virgin in Berne,'' after
being examined and watched by the
Bernese magistrates, was declared to
live without eating 90 in the first year
of her fasting she scarcely slept, and in
the second year never once closed her
eyes in sleep" Katherine Binder of
the Palatinate was said to have taken
nothing but air during nine years,
and Eva Fliegen, of Meurs, according
to the magistrates and ministers, Sc took
no kind of sustenance for the space of
fourteen years together" Cardinal
Richelieu's physician, Franciscus Cite
sius, tells of Joan Balaam of Constance,
who after an attack of fever took a
loathing to food, and for nearly three
years abstained from it altogether, her
appetite subsequently returning. In
1895 there was brought to Cologne a
girl of II who, it was affirmed, had
lived without food or drink of any kind
for three years. In this case, accord
ing to DR.. Hammond, organic disease
seems to have been complicated with
fraud and hysteria. Perhaps we need
not cite the works Of John Heydon, an
enthusiast of the Rosie Cross, who held
that men could easily fast all their lives,
sho aid the same even extend 800 years,
and who fairly smacks his lips as it
were, like very glutton, over g the fine
foreign fairness - in the air which ought
to be sufficient for all moderate folk.
He admits that people of enormous APP
petites might from time to time indulge
in the additional stimulus of plaster of
| cooked meat applied to the epigastrum.
Chambers, however, prints great
many cases of alleged abstinence ex-
| tending over prOtracted periods. Among
! these may be mentioned that of Cecilia
Rygeway, whom Edward III. pardoned
April 25, 1857, "moved by piety and
| for the glory of God and the Blessed
Virgin, who had wrought a miracle in
enabling her to live forty days in Not
! tingham Jail without food or drink,
when accused of her husbands muir
der, and of John Scott, the Faster, a
man of Teviotdale, who in 1881 took
sanctuary in the Abbey of Holyrood
| House, where he remained thirty or
| forty days without food, and then by or
der of the King was shut up in the
castle for 30 days, at the end of which
! period the bread and water left in the
! cell with him were found to be I'M
! touched. Scott afterwards went to
| Rome, where Clement VII. certified to
the honesty of his abstinence, an exhib-
| itiOn of which he gave also at Venice
after his return, as he claimed, from the
| Holy Land, Scott went to London,
where, for preaching against Henry
| VIII S detection from the Church, and
his divorce from Katharine of Arragon,
he was cast into a prison, where he re-
manned for so days, little disconnected
and still fasting. Albergati of Bonoma
investigated Scott's case at his own
house, and September 1, 1882, after a
trial of II days, attested his belief that
the man lived without eating. The
case of Mary WaughtOn of Wigginton,
in Staffordshire, is also given, who
| lived on a spoonful of milk and water q
day, with a piece of bread as large as a
| half-crown, or a bit of meat the size of
pigeons egg. Being of the Church
of England" says the orthodox DR..
Robert Plot, " she is the less likely to
put trick upon the world Then
there are the cases of Christina Niche
lot of France, a girl of IL, who
from November, 1851, to May,
1755, lived upon water, afterwards
displaying her normal appetite
of Ann Walsh of Harrowgate, a girl OF
u, who for Is months, beginning in
1862, subsisted solely on daily allow.
ance of a third of pint of wine and
water; of the sick boy at ChateaurOux
in France, who ate nothing for a whole
year, yet had strength enough to labor
with the men on his fathers farm; OF
the man of Stamford, who, in 1771, fol-
a S10 wager abstained for % days from
solid food or milk; of remnants fasting
woman of ROsshire, Katherine Mcleod
in Platt's book she is called "Janet ,
who, after an attack of fever, lived fol
q months without nOurishment. suf
locating construction compelling hel
parents to desist when they tried to DRY