THEY REFUSED TO EAT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22355, 19 March 1938, Page 21

THEY REFUSED TO EAT

Famous Fasts and Why They Were Endured

AFTER 22 days of starvation the Very Rev. Israel Harding Noe, aged 47, of New York, yielded to “high moral pressure” and reluctantly drank the juice and ate the pulp of six oranges and swallowed several ounces of water. Though no record-breaker in starvation, his achievement is of scientific importance. He has earned for himself a small niche in the history of medicine and unwittingly courted comparison with predecessors who were actuated either by similar spiritual motives or who were yearning for martyrdom.

Francis G. Benedict of the nutrition laboratory of the Carnegie Institute of Washington. He once starved a man for 31 days and measured his energy output day by day. But no physiologist has ever kept a man without food and water to the death.

The physiologists agree that a healthy, well-nourished man can live without food for at least 50 days and possibly as many as 75, provided he is not exposed to severe colds and does nothing more than sit or lie. But they give him only 15 to 20 days if he also goes without drink. Water is necessary to eliminate wastes effectively. Starving to death is not disagreeable; thirsting to death is an ordeal that may approach torture.

Dr. Noe is in the same spiritual class as Gandhi. The “great fast” of that Hindu thorn in the British flesh was undertaken in 1924 when he was still weak from a serious operation, and lasted 21 days.' Other Oriental rivals of Noe are Jatindranath Das, one of 16 who were arrested in 1929 in the Lahore conspiracy, who died after a hunger strike of 61 days; Taha Hussein, who tried to assassinate the Egyptian Prime Minister, Sidki Pasha, and who died in 1932 after fasting 50 days. . .. Famous in medical history is the case of Dr. Tanner, who went without food for 40 days in 1879, and of the painter Merlatti, who fasted for 50 days in Paris in 1886. Both men were in such a sorry state after their trials that they had to be placed under medical care. The record for fasting is held by Terence MacSwiney, once Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, who has left a name both for devotion to a cause and for physical endurance. MacSwiney died in a London prison after having deliberately starved himself for 75 days. On the seventyfirst day he swooned away and was forcibly fed. .When he recovered consciousness he refused to take nourishment of any kind. His voluntary martyrdom to the Sinn Fein cause not only inflamed revolutionists but gave rise to an acrimonious medical controversy. There are still physicians who doubt whether any human being can endure hunger for two and a half months. No records are available of the amount of water that MacSwiney drank, nor is much known about the quantity of food that was forcibly administered. How long can a man do without food and water? The medical experts would like to know. The only scientific experiment under strict control was that conducted by

It is hard to pas's judgment'upon the performances of martyrs like MacSwiney or professional “starvation artists” who exhibit themselves at a price, because they always drink water and because they are not under scientific observation. It is not known, for example, how much water MacSwiney drank. Puetter, a German authority, holds that there is nothing to show that a healthy man may not be able to live from 90 to a 100 days if he were scientifically starved under control like a dog, cat, mouse or rabbit. He also thinks that MacSwiney probably was nearing his end at the seventy-first day and that forcible feeding could not have prolonged his life.