ewing machine; the strong able-bodied active man, one who
works his brains and muscles up to their full power, eats more than the
weak, emaciated and inactive girl, who passes all her time in the
recumbent position in bed; and the latter will, other things being
equal, endure for a longer period entire abstinence from food. A little
food with such a one goes a great way, the demands of the system are at
their minimum, and hence a mouthful of bread, or a little tea and toast
taken at long intervals, suffices for the supply of all, or a great
portion of the waste of the body. With such a person there is not much
intense thought, there is little or no muscular action, the pulsations
of the heart do not require to be of much force, the respiration is
feeble, digestion is at its lowest point, there are no great demands for
animal heat, and in fact if the temperature of the atmosphere of the
room in which such a person lies, be kept high, the function of
calorification may be almost nothing. Still there must be some food
taken. The body, can to a certain extent, be used up in supplying the
force required for the several functions without the necessity for an
immediate restoration of its tissues, but there is a limit to this,
beyond which it is certain death to go.

Chossat[15] has determined this point very accurately by many
experiments performed upon doves, pigeons, Guinea pigs, rabbits, etc. He
found that as a mean result, death ensued when the body lost four-tenths
of its original weight. For instance, a body weighing one hundred
pounds, could endure the loss of forty pounds without death necessarily
following. Five-tenths or one-half appeared to be the extreme loss of
weight in inanition which the body could endure without death resulting.

In addition to the loss of weight the temperature fell rapidly, the
action of the heart was lessened, the number and depth of the
respirations was diminished, and the excretions gradually became smaller
in amount.

Experiments such as those of Chossat on the lower animals, cannot of
course be instituted on the human subject, nevertheless nature sometimes
performs experiments for us which are not without valuable results; and
accidents of various kinds, have also given us important data.

On the 19th of March, 1755, twenty-two persons living in the Alpine
village of Bergemoletto, in Piedmont, were buried in their houses by an
avalanche or whirlwind of snow. The space covered was abo