Copy 1, Volume 1

The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good].

  • John Mason Good
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    167/784 page 113
    ae | CL. I. | DIGESTIVE FUNCTION. [ORD. I. 113 recorded facts, to believe it possible for man himself, under certain: Gey. V. circumstances, not indeed to pass life altogether without food, Srze. IL but to lose all relish for it, and to habituate himself to fastings of hes Si very considerable length, and only interrupted by slender portions Sw ier of the sparest and dilutest aliment. [That hunger is a nervous sensation of the stomach seems probable, from its being influenced, like all the phenomena dependent on nervous action, by habit and by mental causes; from its being increased and excited by causes which act on the sensibility of the organ, as by spirituous drinks and spices, even when the stomach is filled; and by its being diminished by means of the contrary kind, as we know that opium will act in deadening the acute feelings of hunger, and that the Turkish and Indian fanatics called Mollahs and Faquirs are enabled by this means to support fasts of astonishing duration. The term, to which life may be prolonged without aliment, is uncertain. As Dr. Percival has observed, it varies with the incidental circum- stances of the case, and the constitutional powers of the individual. It is remarkable, however, that deprivation of food is better borne in some species of disease than in robust health. In certain hysterical cases, and scirrhous affections of the cardia and cesophagus, a degree of abstinence has been endured for many months, which, in other circumstances, could hardly have been sustained for as many weeks. In catalepsy and mania, a very rigid abstinence may be borne for a considerable period.*] The cases are innumerable Supported in which fasting has been endured ten, twelve, or fifteen days; and, by facts of where there has been access to water, twenty or thirty dayst; 10mg fast- Raulin mentions one of fifty-two days, water alone being drunk = during the time {: and Dr. Willan attended a patient who had fasted sixty-one days, with the exception of drinking from half a pint to a pint of water daily, mixed with a very small quantity of orange-juice, two oranges lasting him for a week, without any em- ployment of the pulp.§ But there are other cases related at full length, and upon authority altogether unimpeachable, of fasting con- tinued for twenty-five months|| ; three gq, ten, fifteen, and eighteen years ; and, witha very spare and only occasional taste of solid food, through the entire life. In the running commentary to the volume on Nosology, I have given several of these histories at some length, and the reader may amuse himself with them at his leisure. ** * See Dublin Hospital Reports, vol.i. p. 159. + Phil. Trans. vol. xiv. p.577.. Mémoires de Toulouse, l’an 1788, t Observations de Médecine, p. 270. § Medical Communications, vol. ii. | Bresl. Samml. band ii. passim. gq Phil. Trans. 1742, 1777. ** See also Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, lan 1764. Stalpart Van der Wiel, Observ. Rar. Mem. of the Lit. and Phil. Soc. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 467., and two extraordinary cases of fasting, quoted in the Medical Gazette for July, 1833. In one of these instances, the patient is stated to have been living six years and a half without swallowing any food, though she moistened her mouth occasionally with water, tea, or whey, which she invariably spat out again. During four years, she had relief only once by. stool, and three times by urine, At the age of thirty-five, the catamenia ceased altogether. In the other case, originally published by Professor Ricci, of Turin, the inability to take food continued about three years; and on the death of the patient, who was also a female, the descending colon, and commencement of the rectum, were found so obstructed by the effects of chronic inflammation, that no solid matters could pass along them. -—— Ep.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3