his hands and feet were a little swollen, as occurs in the form of dropsy known as oedema. On inquiry into the cause of this, Drs. Miller and Gunn found that during the day Tanner had swallowed forty-four ounces of water. He had lost in the time eleven ounces that could be directly measured, which left thirty-three ounces to be accounted for. Twenty-four ounces were accounted for by increase of weight, and the remaining nine were reasonably set down as lost by perspiration and respiration. The quantity of water taken on this day was considered to be excessive for him, and the same quantity in the same time was not repeated, but sufficient was supplied throughout to maintain life.

The lesson here taught is that the life was sustained by the water, and that, in instances where a long period of existence is maintained on mere aqueous fluids, it is the water that sustains. In short, in a sense, water becomes a food. The knowledge of this truth is corrective of some of the most grievous and mischievous errors. Persons undergoing severe privation and fatigue, persons suffering from disease, persons suffering from repugnant dislike to animal and vegetable foods, have for long seasons been supplied with drinks of wine or of spirits and water. Forgetting the water altogether, or treating it as a thing of no consideration, they have declared—and others, even medical men, have declared for them-that they were sustained on alcohol, and therefore the alcohol was a food. It was vain to indicate that in such cases the alcohol was largely diluted with water. It was vain to urge that the Welsh miners were able to live ten days on water alone, for that time was not sufficiently long in the way of proof. It wanted such proofs as these we have now got to demonstrate the actual nature of the sustaining agent, and to exclude the agent which, obtaining all the credit, did, in point of fact, more evil than good.

In the same way we have explained to us why some men, after shipwreck, have subsisted for long periods by laving their bodies with water, and have been refreshed beyond all expectation by a freshwater bath from rain, and by a copious drink from the same pure liquid supply.

III.

A lesson is to be learned from these experiments on the practice of treating the starved in times of great famine, and on the treatment of districts where famines most commonly prevail. Mr. Cornish, in his admirable Report on the late famine in India, takes the utmost care to explain that the danger of the deficient food supply was comparatively small when there was any sufficient quantity of

moisture. So long as fruits and herbs and plants of a succulent and wholesome kind could be obtained, so long there was strictly no famine. But when the juices of fruits and other succulent vegetable supplies of water were cut off, then indeed the people were faminestricken with a vengeance. Mr. Cornish also refers to another factbriefly it is true, yet still with sufficient effect to show his meaningthat when the famine-stricken had passed a certain period of time without food or drink, when they had to a large extent lost the desire for food and drink, they frequently died even when the relief came and food was carefully supplied to them. He relates, if I remember his narrative correctly, that in one instance he took the sufferer to his own home, and there, with the most scrupulous care, tried to restore life and health, but without avail; so that he is led to explain that there is a period in a famine when all the foods that may come in are practically useless to the persons who are a hungered and a-thirst, and yet do not at first sight appear likely to die. This is the secondary effect of famine on the body; but, be it observed, it only occurs when, in addition to deprivation of solid food, there is also deprivation of fluid. Let the fluid be supplied in even small quantity, and, though the emaciation may be extreme, the famine of death may be averted, and the subjection of the stomach to new and proper aliment may lead to perfect restoration of life.

The experience gained from the restoration of Tanner after his fast was over and food was again ministered to him, is in entire accord with this line of independent experience gained in the crisis of famine. The system of the man, reduced as it was, was still in order to go on again when the conditions natural to continued life were supplied. The experience that was gained in the case of the Welsh miners certified to the same fact. In some of the lower forms of life the fact is once more illustrated in the effect of water on their dry and shrivelled forms, which, lying as it were dried up and actually dead, recover life after they are exposed to water and have drunken in the life-sustaining fluid to a sufficient saturation. I once found a snake in my garden at Mortlake which, during a dry season, had become so completely shrivelled and firm that it seemed quite dead; the scales were falling off, and the body emitted the most peculiar and offensive odour. Laid in wet grass, this animal gradually recovered its power to move, and in a few weeks had reattained its full life. In famine, therefore, it is a first point of practice to supply water to the affected; but in a fair but moderate degree, for the water itself may be supplied more freely than is proper, and danger may thereby be promoted. It is pretty certain

that when Dr. Tanner took the large quantity of water on the sixteenth day of his fast he went beyond the margin of safety. When his hands and feet began to swell he was for the time in danger. The danger would consist in the effect produced in the bodily temperature, and in the too extreme fluidity of the blood that would follow rapid dilution.

The lesson respecting famine extends from the particular to the general. It passes from the physician to the statesman. Cornelius Walford, in his truly valuable essay on the famines of the world, past and present, teaches that, while combined with moisture, solar heat affords the most certain means of securing luxuriance; without the moisture, it causes a howling wilderness. The fact is evidenced in India, where, under irrigation of land without luxuriant vegetation to defend the earth, there is, even in the presence of water, a howling wilderness and a district for famine, as if the earth itself lost its power to live and reproduce when the famine of drought came upon it. The lesson taught is, that to prevent districts of famine the same plan must be followed that was followed by the New York enthusiast; the sources of natural moisture for mother Earth herself must be kept up, so that, though she may be deprived of carboniferous and nitrogenous food, she may revivify when the normal conditions of life are restored. But even with the earth the supply of water must be gentle and moderate. Flood it, and it is destroyed. The life that it holds, deprived of due supplies, will live after long deprivation, and will be renewed in all its luxuriance if it be re-fed with natural prevision.

IV.

The experiment carried out by Dr. Tanner has another and more practical application as a lesson of daily life. In cases of accident, as in coal-mines, when living human beings are buried away and given up for lost, it is now plainly-I had almost said authoritatively suggested to us that more prolonged search should be made for those that are lost than is now thought necessary. The miners who after ten days' immurement were at last rescued, might have lived many days more,―twice ten, almost certainly,—and yet it is to be feared they would have been given up long before the first ten days had elapsed, had not sounds from them reached the ears of those who were in search. In discovery for those who are immured a search extending even to forty days would not, as we now know, be needlessly long. Moreover, it would be useful for those who are exposed to such dangers as are now under notice to be instructed in the truth that, if water can be obtained, and if that be trusted to

to the exclusion of all spirituous poisons, they may expect to live in a natural air for a period varying from three to six weeks, during which there will be no effort lost for their rescue. Such knowledge would give both hope and fortitude to unfortunates who might otherwise be led to any rashness of despair, and might open many chances which would not occur to them in ignorance of the light that has now been thrown on the subject of human endurance under privation from solid food. When we consider what numbers of immured victims must have died from starvation because no sufficiently prolonged search for them was maintained, and when the whole horror of desolation of such a form of death is conceived, we cannot reasonably deny that man who by his own self-sacrifice has thrown in a gleam of hope, even in a mere accidental way, has not altogether suffered in vain.

V.

One or two writers out of the few who have credited Tanner with any intention of usefulness have offered an opinion that the experiment he has performed may prove beneficial as a matter of economic science, and that a good many persons may learn a great deal from it. It may fairly be admitted that the experiment is of some value in this direction. When we know how little food is really required to sustain life, we may the more readily surmise how very much more food is taken by most persons than can ever be applied usefully towards that sustainment. I have no compunction in expressing that, while the fasting enthusiast was subjecting himself to considerable danger from his abstinence, many hundreds of thousands of persons were subjecting themselves to an equal danger from indulging in excesses of foods and drinks. The only difference on their parts would be that they were not so wise as to confine their self-imposed risks to a limited period of forty days. They keep up their experiment, and, with every vessel in their bodies strained to repletion and seriously overtaxed, continue to replete and to strain the more. If we could induce, therefore, such persons to contemplate their proceedings and to strike a fair comparison between their own foolhardiness and that of Dr. Tanner, the moral they would easily draw would not be without its worth on their understanding. Unfortunately, the comparison cannot be made with effect, because the feat of excess is in the swim of fashion, while the feat of fasting is very much out of it. The first is a vice

which, by familiarity, begets favour and competition; the second is a folly which, by its oddity, begets amusement, compassion, and contempt.

ature.

VI.

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While it is much to be regretted that the observations which were conducted on the fasting Doctor from day to day were not so accurate, or I had rather said so extended, for I do not know that we have any reason to doubt the accuracy of what was observed as far as it went, there is still, in a physiological point of view, a good deal to be learned from what was observed. That under so restricted a diet the temperature of the man should to the end have remained so steady is of itself an important bit of evidence. We have been led to believe that in a very few days the process of abstaining from a sufficient supply of food, to say nothing about abstaining from food altogether, was a certain means of reducing the animal temperIt was never surmised that water alone would lead to conditions in which the animal warmth would for many weeks remain practically sustained. That the respiration should have remained so little affected is a second equally remarkable fact; and that the muscular power should have been kept up so as to enable the starved man to walk, talk, scold, and compress the dynamometer to 82° for forty days is beyond what any physiologist living would have admitted as possible previously to the event that declares the possibility. On the veritable assumption that, in the matter of feeding, some deception has been carried out, and that, in a surreptitious way, food in small quantities, or some concentrated food, has been cleverly adminstered, these results, coupled with the unquestionable waste of tissue, and with the painful and frequent disturbance of the stomach, are quite sufficiently remarkable to demand the attention of the thoughtful physiological scholar.

The most striking physical fact of all remains, that during the whole of the fasting period the mind of the faster was unclouded, and, taking it all in all, his reasoning powers good. Whoever remembers what depressions of mind, what lapses of memory, what stages of indecision and vacuity come on when for a few hours only the body is deprived of food will wonder, not a little, that any human being could remain self-possessed and ready for argument and contention during a fast of nearly six weeks. Yet, from what is known of Dr. Tanner's experiment, and from the example I gave from my own knowledge, the possession of mental was even more conspicuous than that of physical endurance. Suppose it be urged that, in both the cases cited, the excellent sleeping faculties of the fasters kept their minds in good balance; then we do but move the difficulty one step farther back, since to sleep in a state of fast and to wake again refreshed is itself a strange order of phenomenon. In sleep there is in progress the repair of the body.