The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-09-29

SlCldnS WOulC nave TeRuldlcu ne ~ ma
chinery. and the scalemakers would have
done a thriving business. Yet the pen
nance of Diogenes, who lived in a tub. and
OF Simeon the Stylite, who perched him
self upon a pillar, would have been happi-
ness compared to living perpetuaIly on a
pair of scales, watching the wavering of the
beam. AS Simeon had his followers in
asceticism, under the name of "pillarists,
holy birds" "air martyrs" etc. so Sane
torious would have had his followers to-
day. But he lived before his time; the
age was not ripe for his doctrine Of weigh
ing life in the balance. Otherwise, as Sane
torious was Of an inventive mind, he would
have swelled the lengthy list of patents
with automatic stools and chairs which
would have rung an alarm bell. like a
burglar alarm, or set a danger signal, or,
still more effectively, removed temptation
from gluttons, who might be disposed TO
partake too freely OF the good things OF
the table. by automatically causing the
table to drop through the floor or cause
the chair to collapse or otherwise intimate
that an equilibrium had been established.
Sanctorian restaurants would be the rage,
where an expert iatromathmetician would
weigh every one on entering and give an
order for the exact amount of food to be
Ntl6Hc0 I ~ tdCH. 6hlS NOuAu
heavy burden and hardly worth the liv-
ing. The lean man would be stuffed like a
Strassburg goose and the fat man would be
fed like a goat on a sand bank.
Yet there are those to-day who put food
into their stomachs as If il were a grist
mill, to be fed with so much corn. or a
meat chopper, or a cider mill. They ana
lyze the elements of food and think to
combine it in the stomach and get def
mite results as if the stomach were the
beaker and alembic of the chemical labora-
tory, forgetting to take into account the
gis vitae, the intangible vital force which
works in mysterious ways and cannot be
imprisoned or ''harnessed" by the most
skillful mechanic or transmitted by the
chemists rod.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES ONLY.
IL such enthusiasts would content them
selves with formulating the foods that are
injurious and those that are beneficial they
would benefit the world, but when they at
tempt to promulgate the amount of a GER
tain food necessary, to a feathers weight,
when they slice our bread and carve our
meat to a hairs breadth, that is another
matter, for there are no laws of health,
broadly speaking, such laws being only
general principles which must be modified
according to the individual.
No doubt there are some people who have
the opportunity to eat too much; those
who are not so situated think that these
gourmands are happy, but they little know
of the pangs Of dyspepsia; for those who
make a temple of their stOmachs, in which
they make all kinds of sacrifices, find too
late that the god of ~gluttons is a leaden
god that sits hard.
There are others who also have indiges-
ton, but it is because they have too little
to eat. They suffer from a lack of food,
and the empty stomach, having no food to
grind, grinds itself, wasting away it's sub
stance and impoverishing the miller.
Yet, as the poor are in the vast majority
over the rich, the vital question seems to
be how much can a man eat and live. Cor
mare lived ifty-eight years on twelve
ounces of solid food Chiefly vegetable) and
fourteen ounces of light wine a day;
Thomas Wood, the miller of Billericay.
throve eighteen years upon sixteen ounces
OF flour a day, made into a pudding with
water. But these are exceptions to the
rule, and such a limited bill of fare be-
longs to the order of the strange and mar
vellous things that are to be wondered
at but not initiated.
oO-NaAAC0 AdoIcIS nave gone one DeIIer
than COrnaro and others claiming that they
lived on nothing at all. but their true his
tory is not encouraging to the economical.
The famous Welsh fasting girl first de-
ceived her PARENTS; they found her out,
but thought she would make money for
them by deceiving the public. So she did.
for a period of two years, two months
and one week, and it was the one
week that finished her A strict Uatch naS
kept for seven days and she died. In fact,
the father and mother were tried and con-
victed of manslaughter by criminal negli-
gence, and the medical men who superin-
tended the investigation narrowly escaped
conviction on the charge Of killing and
Staying Sarah Jacob" DIR. Fowler was of
the opinion that she was a night feeder,
and there was a suspicion that she con-
cealed a pint bottle under her left armpit,
which was sufficiently hollow for tina pur-
pose.
Ann Moore, OF Tutbury, was another
fasting fakir. She deceived the public so
well that she invested $1,000 in two years.
the proceeds of donations by sympathetic
visitors. Her story was that she ate no
food because she had taken a dislike to it.
Sarah Jacob was plump when she died of
starvation, but Ann Moore grew thin, SO
very thin that one could feel her backbone
through the abdominal walls. But, for all
her slyness. when DR.. Fox took the case in
hand he discovered the trickery. Rather
than die she made a written confession OF
her imposition, and stated that hel
daughter washed her face every morning
with towels soaked in gravy, milk and the
like. Her daughters kisses, too. were lit
orally sweet, for when she kissed her
mother, which was very often, she slipped
a lump of sugar from her W mouth into
her mothers mouth.
OTHER DIETET1C C-URIOSITIES.
These were curiosities in their way. SUI.
fering much more in their passive perform.
ance than self-made Circassian beauties
and bearded ladies.
There are other curiosities, too, in the
dietetic line. Those who conscientiousI
believe in themselves and who induce
others to believe in them and set them or
pedestals like household gods. lares and
p%enates, whose chapels are the pantry am
their shrines the cook stove.
One of these is DR.. Alcott, an authorit Y
on how TO live on next 10 nothing. He said
that $50 pounds of corn meal will make 79l
pounds of corn bread, of which two mounds
a day is sufficient for the sustenance of a
healthy, Woodworking man. While his