estricted diet for twenty-nine days, although
during the last eight or ten she gave decided evidences of starvation.
She became emaciated, her temperature fell, especially in the
extremities, her breath was offensive, her menstruation ceased, and
there was such a marked sense of discomfort that she began to crave
food, not, as she said, because her appetite had returned, but because
she was afraid she would die. Still she resisted till, on the thirtieth
day, she begged for a little beef tea, and from that moment her appetite
returned to her, and by the end of another week, she was eating her
ordinary quantity and variety of food.

Now, in this case, though the amount of nutriment taken daily was small,
it was of such a character as to be well able to sustain life. The half
pint of chocolate contained milk and sugar, besides the highly
nutritious chocolate, with its carbonaceous and nitrogenous matters, and
yet a month was the extreme limit of endurance.

That a state of inanition exists in Miss Fancher is not to be doubted.
The extreme emaciation, the reduced bodily temperature, the contracted
stomach and intestines, the great bodily weakness, all show that she is
not sufficiently nourished. In her case there is apparently not only an
absence of appetite but a positive disgust for food; and another symptom
often present in inanition--vomiting when nutriment is taken into the
stomach--appears also to be a prominent feature. It is probable that
there is likewise a notable diminution in the amount of urine excreted,
as this is a common accompaniment of hysterical manifestations such as
hers. In some instances the function appears to be almost entirely
arrested, as was the fact in a case described by M. Charcot,[27] and in
two which have come under my own observation.

There is nothing remarkable in the admitted fact that Miss Fancher eats
very little. We have seen how existence can be kept up on greatly
reduced quantities of food, and under circumstances such as those
governing her case, for periods which would be impossible in healthy
persons. No one yet under any conditions, whether of hysteria or trance
or assumed miraculous interference, has, to the satisfaction of
competent and disinterested investigators, lived even two months without
the ingestion of any food whatever. As to going nearly fourteen years in
a state of abstinence--a statement in her behalf which many persons
believe to be true--I can only say that al