gent compulsion.

Gull mentions a girl of fourteen, of healthy, plump appearance, who in
the beginning of February, 1887, without apparent cause evinced a great
repugnance to food and soon afterward declined to take anything but a
half cup of tea or coffee. Gull saw her in April, when she was much
emaciated; she persisted in walking through the streets, where she was
the object of remark of passers-by. At this time her height was five
feet four inches, her weight 63 pounds, her temperature 97 degrees F.,
her pulse 46, and her respiration from 12 to 14. She had a persistent
wish to be moving all the time, despite her emaciation and the
exhaustion of the nutritive functions.

There is another class of abstainers from food exemplified in the
exhibitionists who either for notoriety or for wages demonstrate their
ability to forego eating, and sometimes drinking, for long periods.
Some have been clever frauds, who by means of artifices have carried on
skilful deceptions; others have been really interesting physiologic
anomalies.

Older Instances.--Democritus in 323 B.C. is said to have lived forty
days by simply smelling honey and hot bread. Hippocrates remarks that
most of those who endeavored to abstain five days died within that
period, and even if they were prevailed upon to eat and drink before
the termination of their fast they still perished. There is a
possibility that some of these cases of Hippocrates were instances of
pyloric carcinoma or of stenosis of the pylorus. In the older writings
there are instances reported in which the period of abstinence has
varied from a short time to endurance beyond the bounds of credulity.
Hufeland mentions total abstinence from food for seventeen days, and
there is a contemporary case of abstinence for forty days in a maniac
who subsisted solely on water and tobacco. Bolsot speaks of abstinence
for fourteen months, and Consbruch mentions a girl who fasted eighteen
months. Muller mentions an old man of forty-five who lived six weeks on
cold water. There is an instance of a person living in a cave
twenty-four days without food or drink, and another of a man who
survived five weeks' burial under ruins. Ramazzini speaks of fasting
sixty-six days; Willian, sixty days (resulting in death); von Wocher,
thirty-seven days (associated with tetanus); Lantana, sixty days;
Hobbes, forty days; Marcardier, six months; Cruikshank, two months; the
Ephemerides, thirteen months; Gerard, sixty-nin