Omaha daily bee., 1916-06-16
Health Hints Fashions Womoms Work Household Topics
Why Human Beings Can Line Long
Without Food

| and our skin ShrlVels uhuer lhe e'p
ping of starvation.
In fact, nature has the whole body
polite organized for war after the
fashion of the German general staft'
with precise graduation from .greedi..
ness at the one end to loyalty and
self-sacrifice at the other. so that
the lowest and weakest tissues are
eaten up first, while the highest and,
in their own estimation at least, most
indispensable, are preyed upon scarce
ly at all. To put in crude percentages,
we can live on our fat in starvation
until 90 to 95 per cent Of that is gone;
We can live on Our muscles until
80 per cent of their weight, which
means more than a third of our total
body, weight, is gone. We can eat
up and keep body and life together on
80 to 40 per cent of our liver and di-
gestive organs. Our skin and our
lungs will yield nearly 20 per cent
of their weight for the life of the
body. While our indispensable heart
and supreme directing brain and ner--
vous system lose only about 10 and 5
per cent of their weight, respectively.
So that, to put it very roughly, ma
ture has so skillfully arranged matters
that man weighing $50 pounds can
burn up and utilize 50 pounds of his
own weight for starvation rations and
yet keep together his organization and
his, pumping plant, so that when the
famine is over and the siege is raised
he can rebuild his working force
again completely This gives him, of
course, pound and half a day for
some thirty days if he can only get
drinking water.
Nature conducts all her most vital
operations upon a wide margin of
safety" as. Meltzer aptly terms it.
But a word Of caution should be
added Ito emphasize that this is only
an emergency measure, but not in the
least either adapted to or useful in
ordinary circumstances. The process,
in fact, Of burning up ones own It's
sues, eating ones own flesh, like any
other form of cannibalism, while it is
wonderfully effective in simply main
tanning life after some desperate fash
ion, is in all other regards an ex-
! tremely undesirable and even danger
GUS performance.
Complete abstention from food or
even living upon extremely inadequate
and small amount, so as to cause con-
sumption of ones own tissues and
loss in weight, is anything but a
healthy or physiological process; and
as we years ago discovered in our
work with dieting diabetic patients. is
accompanied by the formation of def
mite and dangerous poisons in the
body.
These poisons, known as the ace
tone group, are the principal agents in
causing death in diabetes and other
similar disease conditions and have a
singular effect upon the nervous sys-
tenn, partly in numbering it in a most
merclful manner so as to blunt the
edge of hunger; for as nearly all its
victims have testified, starvation, after
the first three or four days, is hardly
at all painful. But, second, like near
ly all other mild narcotics, they pro-
duce illusions and hallucinations.
One of>the first of these is a curious
sense of mental clearness and lucidity.
So that the individual undergoing
either complete or partial starvation
will frequently comment on the ex-
tent to which it has improved his men
tai powers and cleared his brain. This
quickly goes on to positive hallucina-
tons Of voices and lights and visions,
for the most part of beauty and
charm. This curious two-fold effect
Of the acetone bodies in starvation ex-
plains at once the remarkable popu-
larity which fasting has always en-
joyed with ascetics and mystics of
every age for the purpose of purifying
their minds and placing them in re-
ceptive condition for visions and rev.
elations.
1t also explains why so many of the
spare diet, low protein, vegetarian
cures and schemes for the physical re-
generation of humanity score such a
striking apparent success during the
first few days or weeks.
| Those who undertake such ventures
are, as rule, to begin with, suscep-
tible, to say the least of it; and the
cloud Of rosy illusions bred in them
by the autotoxins of starvation fills
them with enthusiasm and delight at
the success Of their experiment in
economy.