THE NEW FASTING MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7824, 18 December 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE NEW FASTING MAN.

SteffanoMkblatti, the young Italian artist who has undertaken to outdo Saooi, began hie fifty daye , fast in Pane recently. A medical committee has been organised by Dr. Mareohal to watch Merlatti, and to insure the sincerity ofl the experiment. Merlatti, who, daring his fifty days , fast, is to content hirneelf with filtered water, says that he was only twelve years old when he accomplished , his first experiment in fasting. It wa», it seeme, when he ran away from school. Hβ relates that having got away into the country, be amused himself very well for no less than eleven days without ever thinking of eating. Indeed, he maintains that he did not even feel the pangs of hunger, but from time to time drank a little water from the brooks. Since then he has, it seems, frequently spent sir, eight, and ten days without taking any sort of food. It was not, however, until he entered the Fine Arts School at Turin that he commenced eeriously to train himself to fastmg. To prepare for a fast Merlatti eats very largely during several daye. While at Turin, he affirms, he abstained from all food daring eighteen days, at the same time following all the classes, and acting, in fact, jnst as if he were living under normal conditions. His last fast was accomplished In London, where, he says, he fasted thirtysir days. At the expiration of that time he had lost about twelve kilograms—a little less than twenty, seven pounds —in weight. .Merlatti, who refuses to make any bets on bis experiment, says that in undertaking it his sole object is to prove that Sucoi's mysterious liquid composition is only a mystification, and that the truth is Suooi's stotnaoh is simply like his own—capable of enduring a more or less prolonged fast. [A cablegram in another column states that Merlatti has successful? completed his fifty d»ye'efast.J