FASTING FEATS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 18 September 1926, Page 11

FASTING FEATS

GPU E turnstiles clicked., Came an other patty,of sightseers agog with curiosity. The lasting mail lit a cigarette ajui closed his eyes: ‘ ‘ ’Ere, wake up—show a leg,” shouted a. fat woman rattling the ’glass with the handle of her umbrella. “What do you think we’ve paid our money for? —to sec you go to -slcepU’ Fasting for a living surely is one of the most fantastic of professions, yet there are at least a dozen men alive today who find it an easy way of making money. For a lump sum, or a weekly salary, which goes on as long-as. they are able to do Avithout food, .they live on air and cigarette smpke until the human machine breaks down under the strain. •

. Then, when they are restored to fitness, they -go into training, and the business of capitalising starvation begins all over again. Doing without food for extensive periods as a 'cure for disease and illhealth is now quite a common practice. Lady Fisher, wife of Sir N. F. Warren Fisher, Permanent. Secretary to the British Treasury, has been living for over four .weeks on fruit drinks and Aval or in AA’hich vegetables have been cooked, and Mr C. W. Trelawney Irving, another believer in the fasting cure, has confessed; that he underwent a fast of 50 days under similar conditions.

STARVATION AS AN OCCUPATION

But Hie amateur faster* have a long wav to go before, they rival the complete feats of the .professionals. _ _ Thousands of sightseers m lam watched the fasting, of Wollyy, the Dutchman, who, enclosed in a small glass cage, recently attempted to break all previous records. With a chair and, a table for his comfort, several thousands'of cigarettes, writing materials and books, he was surrounded night and day /by curious crowds anxious, to «urnrd against any possibility of being fed.

Clad in evening clothes* with a cigarette between his lips, lie lounged back in his chair regardless of the staring sensation-mongers. “ ■ For the first few days he busied himself with setting down his impressions on paper. Then, when that palled, ho began pacing up and down (the “cage,” keeping his eyes on the floor or the small airholes in the roof, as if to avoid the sea of curious faces. To try and break down his resolution, .men would bring their luncheons and eat them before his eyes. Woily would watch the steam curling up from hashes arid grills, but he never wavered.; Though his mouth was watering, he -calmly took a sip at liis carafe of water and lit another cigarette. It went on until the eleventh day.. Then, suddenly, he: leapt to his feet from a deep lethargy and wildly sunk his teeth in his wrist. Officials, rushed in and lie was taken to hospital. The human machine had broken down.

Doctors are divided as to how long a man can live without food. A famous professional faster, Dr. Tannery, once went 40 days without a bite. Sued, another professional, also fasted for 40 days, and: lost 341 b 3oz during the period. - \ Subsequently their performances wore surpassed by .two talians, Mer-lat-ti and Alexander' Jacques, both of whom fasted for 50 days. .

Some almost , incredible catless' records were established by the Irish plunger-strikers in Mountjoy Prison. Alderman McSweeney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, fasted for 74 days before he, died, while another hunger-striker, Joseph Murphy, fasted for 7(1 days.