Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-24
Some Famous Fasters.

Dr. Forbes Winslow in Pail Mall Gazette.l The great publicity given to the question of fasting now before the world, excited by recent successful and unsuccessful attempts to sustain life, has induced me to state 8 few facts not generally known in reference to this matter. That life can be supported and preserved and the ordinary duties performed on diet comparatively simple and limited in amount is an admitted truth and accepted by most persons who have investigated it.. In 1719 there lived certain Thomas Wood, born of incorporate parents. Up to the age of forty he indulged himself to excess In meat of fatty nature and in large quantities of those articles of diet containing fatty in gredients, such as cheese, butter and sugar, his beverage being strong ale. He gradually developed into man of enormous dlmen- sions, and complication after complication of disorders arising day by day, he became alarmed at the inevitable which stared him in the face. He gradually cut down his diet by degrees, diminishing his beer to begin with, and then those diets containing sugar, and also animal flesh. He ultimately allowed himself only pudding made of sea biscuit. With this change of food all his symptoms disappeared, he became metamorphosed from a monster into 8 man once again. The curl- ous fact is that he abstained from all drink of whatever description. The "sea pudding" was composed follows: Three pints of skinned milk; this being boiled, was pour ed on one pound of sea biscuit broken into pieces. This compound being boiled in 8 cloth for two hours, it became pudding of sufficient consistency to be cut with knife, and on this alone he subsisted for two years, enjoying splendid health, and with an ab- sence of all those disagreeable symptoms be- fore mentioned. The quantity taken was 11S pounds at five o'clock in the morning as his breakfast, and the same quantity at noon for dinner; after this hour he abstained from all food until the next day. The case of Wood is beyond all doubt, as two clergymen, two doctors, and the church warden in the parish where he lived all testified to the truth of the facts.
 Tracing the history of fasters, we come up- on that of John Brown, a miner in Ayr shire He lived buried in a coal mine with out swallowing anything but small quanti- ties of chalybeate water sucked through a straw, this being sufficient to sustain life even. in a contaminated atmosphere, the nervous exeitability being thus diminished, and thus mitigating the cravings of hunger. This is most interesting case, and bears comparison at the present time with the Italian fasters and their wonderful drinks. At Liege some colliers were shut up in pit for twenty four days, and sustained their lives with water alone from 8 fountain. Experiments were made and the water ana 1yzed. It was found to contain upon evapo- ration nothing extraordinary, and only lime, or what is called s'ealx." The same consti- tuent is supposed to have existed in the fluid which supported John Brown, as before al- luded to. Why should this not be the same in the case of the Italiansl-water impregna- ted with lime suspended in solution. I only give it as theory, and think a correct one. Elizabeth Woodcock, in 1799, lived eight days snow water alone. This came from 8 well thirty feet deep, and which had been made for the purpose of obtaining chalk. Here we have another instance of the "calx.n In for thirty seven days in the snow, living on snow water also impregnated with lime. In 1795 Yorkshire gentleman, aged sixty, ab- solutely was incapacitated from taking food for thirty-six days. When in health he weighed 240 pounds, and on the thirty y-second day of his fast he was reduced to 13S pounds