k. He also tells of Eva Flegen, who began to
fast in 1596, and from that time on for sixteen years, lived without
meat or drink. According to the Rev. Thos. Steill, Janet Young fasted
sixteen years and partially prolonged her abstinence for fifty years.
The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, which contains a mention of
the foregoing case, also describes the case of Janet Macleod, who
fasted for four years, showing no signs of emaciation. Benjamin Rush
speaks of a case mentioned in a letter to St. George Tucker, from J.
A. Stuart, of a man who, after receiving no benefit from a year's
treatment for hemiplegia, resolved to starve himself to death. He
totally abstained from food for sixty days, living on water and chewing
apples, but spitting out the pulp; at the expiration of this time he
died. Eccles relates the history of a beautiful young woman of sixteen,
who upon the death of a most indulgent father refused food for
thirty-four days, and soon afterward for fifty-four days, losing all
her senses but that of touch.

There is an account of a French adventurer, the Chevalier de
Saint-Lubin, who had a loathing for food and abstained from every kind
of meat and drink for fifty-eight days. Saint-Sauver, at that time
Lieutenant of the Bastille, put a close watch on this man and certified
to the verity of the fast. The European Magazine in 1783 contained an
account of the Calabria earthquake, at which time a girl of eighteen
was buried under ruins for six days. The edge of a barrel fell on her
ankle and partly separated it, the dust and mortar effectually stopping
the hemorrhage. The foot dropped off and the wound healed without
medical assistance, the girl making a complete recovery. There is an
account taken from a document in the Vatican of a man living in 1306,
in the reign of Pope Clement V, who fasted for two years. McNaughton
mentions Rubin Kelsey, a medical student afflicted with melancholia,
who voluntarily fasted for fifty-three days, drinking copiously and
greedily of water. For the first six weeks he walked about, and was
strong to the day of his death.

Hammond has proved many of the reports of "fasting girls" to have been
untrustworthy. The case of Miss Faucher of Brooklyn, who was supposed
to have taken no food for fourteen years, was fraudulent. He says that
Ann Moore was fed by her daughter in several ways; when washing her
mother's face she used towels wet with gravy, milk, or strong
arrow-root mea