The original electronic text of this document may be found in Steve Solomon's [Hygiene Library].

WANT OF APPETITE is not always a morbid symptom, nor even a sign of imperfect digestion. Nature may have found it necessary to muster all the energies of our system for some special purpose, momentarily of paramount importance. Organic changes and repairs, teething, pleuritic eruptions, and the external elimination of bad humors (boils, etc.), are often attended with a temporary suspension of the alimentary process. As a rule, it is always the safest plan to give Nature her own way.

— FELIX L. OSWALD

Introduction
1 Definition of Fasting
2 Fasting Among the Lower Animals
3 Fasting In Man
4 A Bill-of-Fare for the Sick
5 Autolysis
6 Fasting Not Starving
7 Chemical and Organic Changes During Fasting
8 Repair of Organs and Tissues During Fasting
9 The Influence of Fasting On Growth and Regeneration
10 Changes in the Fundamental Functions While Fasting
11 The Mind and Special Senses During a Fast
12 Secretions and Excretions
13 Bowel Action During Fasting
14 Fasting and Sex
15 Rejuvenescence Through Fasting
16 Gain and Loss of Strength While Fasting
17 Gain and Loss of Weight During Fasting
18 Fasting Does Not Induce Deficiency "Disease"
19 Death in the Fast
20 Objections to the Fast
21 Does Fasting Cure Disease?
22 The Rationale of Fasting
23 The Length of the Fast
24 Hunger and Appetite
25 Contra-Indications to Fasting
26 Fasting in Special Periods and Conditions of Life
27 Symptomatology of the Fast
28 Progress of the Fast
29 Hygiene of the Fast
30 Breaking the Fast
31 Gaining Weight After the Fast
32 Living After the Fast
33 Fasting in Health
34 Fasting in Acute Disease
35 Fasting in Chronic Disease
36 Fasting in Drug Addiction
37 Fasting Versus Eliminating Diets
38 Sun-Bathing
39 Sunlight
40 The Use of Sunshine
41 Sunshine in Sickness
42 Suntan and Sunburn
43 Substitutes for Sun-Bathing
44 Objections to Sun-Bathing
45 The Sun Bath
46 The Air Bath

DEDICATION TO A NEW ERA, which has just begun to glow in the gold-red light of Eos, the goddess of dawn, while the deluge of medieval superstitions is fast assauging, and many a submerged truth has reappeared like a bequest of a former and better world, to stand as way-marks on the road to a true Science of Life — its name a prophecy that links its destiny with invisible but strong ties, to the fate of the dainty butterfly: a grovelling grub entombs itself as a chrysalis in a cocoon whence it comes forth a being of celestial beauty, a winged flower of rainbow colors and pure silk, a fitting emblem of the fruition of life's renewed effort to assert its original purity and healthfulness — that no longer considers depravity and wretchedness as the normal condition of man, and happiness as the reward of a self-abhorring suppression of all natural desires; that rejects the blind confidence in the efficacy of an abnormal and mysterious remedy, and realizes that the physical laws of creation find an echo in our innate monitor, this book is dedicated by — THE AUTHOR

PURE JOYS never pall; uniformity is uniform happiness if the even tenor of our way is the way of nature. And nature herself will guide our steps if the exigence of abnormal circumstances should require a deviation from the beaten path. Remedial instincts are not confined to the lower animals; man has his full share of them; the self-regulating power of the human system is as wonderful in the variety as in the simplicity of its resources. Have you ever observed the weather-wisdom of the black bind-weed? — how its flowers open in the morning sun and close at the approach of the noontide glare; how its tendrils expand their spirals in a calm, but contract and cling, as with hands, to their support when the storm-wind sweeps the woods? With the same certainty our dietetic instincts respond to the varying demands of our daily life. Without the aid of art, without the assistance of our own experience, they even adapt themselves to the exigencies of our abnormal conditions, and our interference alone often prevents them from counteracting the tendency of dire abuses.

All dietetic needs of our body thus announce themselves in a versatile language of their own, and he who has learned to interpret that language, nor willfully disregards its just appeals, may avoid all digestive disorders — not by fasting if he is hungry, or forcing food upon his protesting stomach, not by convulsing his bowels with nauseous drugs, but by quietly following the guidance of his instincts.

Nature's health laws are simple. The road to health and happiness is not the labyrinthine maze described by our medical mystagogues. In pursuing their dietetic cedes one is fairly bewildered by a mass of incongruous precepts and prescriptions, laborious compromises between old and new theories, arbitrary rules, and illogical exceptions, anti-natural restrictions and anti-natural remedies. Their view of the constitution of man suggests the King of Aragon's remark about the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic system: "It strikes me the Creator might have arranged this business in a simpler way."

— FELIX L. OSWALD

Introduction

In presenting this volume on fasting I am well aware of existing prejudices against the procedure. It has long been the practice to feed the sick and to stuff the weak on the theory that "the sick must eat to keep up their strength." It is very unpleasant to many to see long established customs broken, and long cherished prejudices set at naught, even when a great good is to be achieved.

"Shall we not respect the accumulated wisdom of the three thousand years," ask the defenders of the regular school and their feeding and drugging practices.

Where, we ask, is the wisdom for us to respect? We see little more than an accumulation of absurdities and barbarities. "The accumulated wisdom of three thousand years!" Look at sick humanity around you; look at the mortality reports; look at generation after generation, cut off in the very spring-time of life, and then talk of wisdom or science!

In this volume we offer you real wisdom and true science — we offer you the accumulated wisdom of many thousands of years, wisdom that will still be good when the mass of weakening, poisoning and mischief-inflicting methods of regular medicine are forgotten. A brief history of fasting will help to prove the truth of this.

During the past forty years fasting and its Hygienic accompaniments have gained immense popularity and the position to which they are entitled by virtue of their intrinsic worth. The advocates of fasting are constantly increasing in number and the strenuous opposition that fasting has had to face from the medical profession and from laymen alike, has merely served to advertise its possibilities and the simplicity and reasonableness of the claims made for it. The benefits that flow from a properly conducted fast are such that we do not hesitate to predict that it is the one procedure in disease that will be universally employed when it is once fully understood.

The literature of fasting is not well known to the average doctor of whatever school. Few of them have made a study of the subject. Likewise, they have had no experience with fasting and lack confidence in its application. A brief review of the history of fasting will serve, therefore, as a background to the subject and will give confidence to practitioner and patient.

As will be shown later, fasting for the many purposes for which it has been employed, has been in use since before the dawn of history. Indeed, it may be said that it is as old as life. As a procedure in the care of the sick, it fell almost wholly into disuse during the Dark Ages and was revived only a little over a hundred years ago.

Records of fasting are found among almost all peoples in both ancient and modern times. Our encyclopedias tell us that, although the objectives of fasting vary among individuals, the aims of fasting fall, for the most part, into two distinct categories: (1) fasting for reasons of spiritual enlightenment, self-discipline and other religious motives; and (2) fasting for the purpose of achieving political ends. Unfortunately the writers of articles on fasting in the encyclopedias have limited themselves too severely in their studies of fasting; perhaps they have done this for the distinct purpose of suppressing many important truths about fasting. Writers of articles for encyclopedias are not addicted to the commendable habit of telling the truth and they are usually from ten to a hundred years behind the march of knowledge.

The authors of the articles on fasting in the various encyclopedias seem to confine their reading and bibliographies to religious fasting. Although none of the present-day encyclopedias that I have consulted carries the old statement that if a man goes without food for six days his heart will collapse and he will die, they carry statements almost as absurd. For example, the article on starvation in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Americana carries the statement that the "preliminary" hunger is accompanied with "severe pain," in the stomach and epigastric region generally, thirst "becomes intense," "the face assumes, meanwhile an anxious, pale expression; * * * the skin is said to become covered with a brown secretion." It speaks of the "decomposition and organic decay of the tissues," as though the fasting person is undergoing a rotting process. "The gait totters, the mind becomes impaired, delirium and convulsions may ensue and death occurs." "From 8 to 10 days is regarded as the usual period during which human life can be supported without food or drink. * * * A case is recorded in which some workmen were dug out alive after fourteen days in confinement in a cold, damp vault; and another is mentioned in which a miner was extricated alive after being shut up in a mine for twenty-three days, during the first ten of which he subsisted on a little dirty water. He died, however, three days after his release."

There is, in this description, and there is much more to it (I have merely repeated the high-lights), of "starvation," no differentiation between fasting and starving, little differentiation between fasting with and fasting without water, and a gross exaggeration of the actual developments, together with the addition of fictional elements that are drawn from the realm of the imagination. The bibliography at the end of this section lists exactly three publications one of these dated 1884-5, one dated 1847 and the other dated 1915. But the most important part of the 1915 publication is entirely ignored.

Physiologists who discuss fasting, or as they prefer to term it, starvation, are as prone, as are the writers of articles for the encyclopedias, to rely upon a limited and antiquated bibliography. Howell, for example, in his Textbook of Physiology, a standard text, relies largely upon Voit. He gives as a bibliography of "original sources," Virchows's Archives, Vol. 131, Supplement 1893; Luciani's Das Hungern, 1890, Weber's Ergebnisse der Physiologie, Vol. 1, part 1, 1902, and finally Benedict's A Study of Prolonged Fasting, Carnegie Institute, No. 203, 1915.

Such deliberate suppression of all the accumulated information about fasting makes it extremely difficult for the student of the subject to learn the truth about fasting. Coupled with this suppression of information is the habitual failure of all standard authors to distinguish between fasting and starving. Is this done through ignorance, or is it done with malice aforethought; is it done for the deliberate purpose of prejudicing the student against the subject? I leave this for the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Fasting in its modern phase had its beginning with Dr. Jennings in the first quarter of the last century. Jennings may be said to have stumbled upon it by accident at a time when his waning faith in drugs caused him to look for other and more dependable means of caring for the sick.

It is quite common to see Dr. Dewey referred to as the "Father of the Fasting Cure." Dr. Hazzard on the other hand, declares that "Dr. Tanner is justly entitled to first place among the pioneers of therapeutic fasting." I have no desire to detract one iota from the credit due these worthy men, but I must insist that first place belongs to Dr. Jennings, and wish to point out in this connection that Jennings possessed a fairly accurate idea of nature's "bill-of-fare for the sick," before Dr. Dewey discovered it in Yeo's Physiology.

Dr. Henry S. Tanner was born in England in 1831; died in California in 1919. His first fast was begun in July 17, 1877. Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey was born in Wayland, Pennsylvania in May, 1839; died March 28, 1904. In July, 1877 Dr. Dewey witnessed the first case that fasted to recovery, the stomach rejecting all food, and which set him to thinking about and finally employing fasting. Thus the work of Dewey and Tanner began almost simultaneously. However, Dr. Jennings was employing the fast before either of these men were born and wrote about it while they were both boys. Dr. Trall, Sylvester Graham, Dr. Shew, and other of their co-workers were also advocating and using the fast while Drs. Tanner and Dewey were school boys, although one almost never sees these men's names in the literature of fasting. We find Dr. Jennings using fasting as early as 1822 and Graham advocating fasting in 1832. In his work on Cholera, which is his published lectures on this subject, first delivered in New York City in 1832, he recommends fasting for cholera and other febrile conditions. The Graham Journal advocated fasting in 1837, its first year.

A writer in the Graham Journal for April 18, 1837, writing under the title "The Graham System — what is it?" includes in his item by item description of the system the fact that "abstinence should always be preferred to taking medicine — it is a benefit to lose a meal occasionally."

Another writer who signed himself, Equilibrist, writing under the title, "Stuff a Cold and Starve a Fever," in the Journal of Sept. 19 of the same year, quotes Dr. Beaumont's Experiments on Digestion — "in febrile diathesis, very little or no gastric juice is secreted. Hence, the importance of withholding food from the stomach in febrile complaints. It can afford no nourishment; but is actually a source of irritation to that organ, and, consequently, to the whole system. No solvent can be secreted under these circumstances; and food is as insoluble in the stomach as lead would be under ordinary circumstances" — and adds, "In other remarks, if I remember right, the doctor states that food has lain in the stomach of Alexis St. Martin from 6 to 30 or 40 hours, unchanged except by chemical affinities (he is here referring to fermentation and putrefaction. H. M. S.) during some of his ill turns. And yet what multitudes think that when they have a 'bad cold' they must eat or they will certainly be sick! Oh! I must 'stuff a cold and starve a fever,' they will tell you, and go at it in earnest; and not unfrequently in this way bring on a 'fever' that will require weeks to 'starve out.'

"I can testify from my own 'experiments' as well as those of Doctor Beaumont, that any person having a 'bad cold' may find entire relief by abstaining from food, one, two, three, or perhaps five or six meals if the case is a bad one, and that too without taking a particle of medicine."

It is worthy of note that Graham and the Grahamites attempted to form their practices in conformity with what was known in physiology while the medical profession, though studying physiology in college, were then as now, forgetting it as soon as they got into practice and followed the time-honored practice of drugging which bears no normal relation to physiology and violates every physiological principle.

Dr. Oswald, who was a contemporary of Dewey, refers to fasting as "the Graham starvation cure."

It is quite probable also that Doctors Page, Oswald and Walter preceded Dewey and Tanner in the employment of fasting. Dr. Page's book, published in 1883, recounts recoveries while fasting and urges fasting in many cases. Dr. Oswald's Fasting Hydropathy and Exercise was published in 1900. These three men were all acquainted with the works of Dr. Jennings and were influenced much by him, frequently quoting him. I feel safe in assuming that they also received much from Trall and Graham. In his How Nature Cures, published in 1892, Dr. Densmore definitely ascribes his use of fasting to "studying the writings of Trall, Nichols, Shew and other writers and hygienic physicians" forty years before writing his own book.

Laboratory confirmation of the benefits of fasting is not lacking; but it is not needed. Science is not confined to the laboratory and human observation is often as reliable in the field of practice as in that of experiment. Much experimental work with fasting, both in men and animals, has been done by approved laboratory men. Little attention has been given by these men to the value of fasting in "disease" conditions, but their work is of value to us in a general study of the subject before us.

Dr. A. Gulepa, of Paris, employed short fasts in the treatment of diabetes and other chronic "diseases" and wrote a book on "Autointoxication and Disintoxication: An account of a new fasting Treatment in Diabetes and other Chronic Diseases." Dr. Herrick Stern published a book on "Fasting and Under-Nutrition in the Treatment of Diabetes (the Allen Treatment); while Drs. Lewis W. Hill and Rene S. Ackman wrote: "The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes," in which they gave an account of the use of fasting in diabetes in the Rockefeller Institute.

In 1915 Frederick M. Allen, A.B., M.D., of the Rockefeller Institute Hospital "discovered" the "starvation treatment" of diabetes. Dr. Dewey successfully employed fasting in diabetes as far back as 1878; while Dr. Hazzard employed fasting in diabetes prior to 1906.

In 1923 "Fasting and Undernutrition" by Sergius Morgulis, Professor of Biochemistry in the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, was published. It is a most thorough study of fasting, starvation and undernutrition as far as these subjects have been worked out in the laboratory.

Although Prof. Morgulis has a wide acquaintance with the so-called scientific literature dealing with the subject of fasting or inanition, he voluntarily cuts himself off from all of the literature of so-called therapeutic fasting, and applies such terms as "enthusiasts," "amateurs" and "faddists" to those whose years of experience with fasting enable them to apply it to the care of human beings in the various states of impaired health. In an extended bibliography he mentions, from the many works on fasting by its exponents, only that of Hereward Carrington. Mr. Carrington's book is one of the best books on the subject which has yet appeared, but it is by no means complete or even up-to-date, having been published in 1908. Morgulis ignores the works of Jennings, Graham, Trall, Densmore, Walter, Dewey, Tanner, Haskell, Macfadden, Sinclair, Hazzard, Tilden, Eales, Rabagliati, Keith and others who have had widest experience with fasting and who have written extensively upon the subject.

Necessarily, this limits his field very largely to the field of animal experimentation and also limits his knowledge of the effects of fasting in various pathological states. In the book there is no information on the proper conduct of the fast. The hygiene of the fast, crises during the fast, danger signals during the fast, breaking the fast — these and other very practical problems are not considered. Neither does he distinguish between fasting and starving. The omission of these things from a technical book is inexcusable.

Professor Morgulis' masterly work is full of technical data on the effects of abstinence from food upon the body and its various parts. However, since most of its data is based upon animal experimentation, he having elected to ignore the works on fasting by those who employ it, and since what is true of one species is not always true of another, the conclusions he arrives at in this work may be accepted only in a general way and do not always harmonize with the findings of those who employ fasting in men, and particularly in the care of the sick.

Most of the "scientific" works on inanition have little or no value for us in a study of fasting. This is so for the following reasons:

1. Abstinence from food may mean missing one meal, or it may mean abstinence from food until death from starvation results. In these works little or no effort is made to differentiate the changes that occur during the different stages of inanition.

2. Most of the studies (in man) have been in famine victims and these are not cases of fasting, nor do these people suffer only from lack of food. There is often exposure, there is always fear and worry, there are also the effects of one-sided diets. Findings in death in famines are classed as due to inanition and are not differentiated from fasting changes.

3. In total inanition no water is taken and many of the scientific experiments withhold water as well as food from the animals. The results of such experiments cannot be used to determine the results of fasting.

4. Inanition studies are all mixed up with pathologies of all kinds that occasion more or less inanition. Many of the studies of starvation in humans have been complicated with other conditions that account for much of the findings.

5. Studies of fasting changes are so mixed up with starvation changes and changes due to dietary deficiencies and there is so little discrimination between the three types of changes, that these books become very misleading.

6. None of the experimenters have ever observed properly conducted fasts of the sick under favorable conditions, hence they know almost nothing of its value under such conditions.

7. There is another source of confusion in these books. I refer to the frequent use of pathological terms to describe what is not pathological at all. The word "degeneration" is often used when no real degeneration is evident. Or, shall we say that there is a form of degeneration that may be properly designated physiological to distinguish it from another form that is distinctly pathological. For example, muscular "atrophy" that follows cessation of muscular work is not pathological. Decrease in size of a part from lack of food with no actual pathological changes in the tissues and no real perversion of its function is not degeneration, though commonly referred to as such in these books.

The same criticisms may be made of Inanition and Malnutrition, by C. M. Jackson, M.S., M.D., LL.D., 1925. In a bibliography covering 108 pages, I was unable to locate the name of any man, other than Carrington, who is in a position to speak with authority on fasting. Jackson's is a very valuable book, crammed with technical data and detailed experimental results, but lacking in any reference to the hygienic value of the fast.

Much valuable work has been done by laboratory experimenters, but it is obviously lacking in certain important particulars. For example, Morgulis points out that fasting decreases sugar tolerance in dogs, but in no other animal. Indeed, he records that fasting is distinctly beneficial in diabetes in man. He records an experiment performed on fasting rats and pigeons in which the rats gave one result and the pigeons an exactly opposite result. In some species fasting diminishes the reaction to certain drugs, in other species it increases this reaction.

In certain animals, such as the frog, some of the senses are diminished; while in man the senses are remarkably improved. So distinctive is this sign that we regard it as evidence that our patient is fasting. Sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch are all acutened. Hearing and smell often become so acute that the faster is annoyed by noises and odors that are ordinarily unheard and unsmelled by him. Blindness, catarrhal deafness, sensory paralysis and loss of the senses of taste and smell have all been known to yield to the kindly influences of the fast. The cleansing of the system occasioned by fasting quickly revivifies the mental and sensory powers.

While fasting frequently produces temporary sterility in men, it has no such effect in salmon and seals. The gonads of salmon actually undergo a great increase in size while fasting, while both they and male seals fast during their entire mating season. It is only right that I add that it is denied by some that salmon actually fast during this season.

Prof. C. M. Child, of the University of Chicago, experimenting with worms, found that if a worm is fasted for a long time it does not die, but merely grows smaller and smaller, living on its own tissues for months. Then, after it has been reduced to a minimum size, if it is fed it begins to grow and starts life anew, as young as ever it was. While we know that fasting renews the human body, we also know that it will not renew it to the extent it does the body of the worm. Man is not a worm, nor a dog, nor a pigeon, nor a rat. In a broad general sense, all animals are fundamentally alike; but there are specific differences, both in structure and function and in instinct and reaction as well as in individual needs, and for this reason it is always dangerous to reason from worm or dog to man.

This, however, does not hinder us from studying the similarities and differences existing between man and the sub-orders and making whatever use of these studies we may. It may be said that there is one particular in which all animals, including man, are alike; namely, their ability to go without food for prolonged periods and to profit by this.

For the most part the regular profession has either ignored or else denounced fasting. Fasting is a fad or it is quackery. They do not study it, do not employ it and do not endorse it. On the contrary, they declare that "the sick must eat to keep up their strength."

It is gratifying to see that a change is under way. Just recently (1933) a meeting of famous medical consultants from different parts of the British Isles, was held at Bridge of Allen, Stirlingshire, Scotland. The conference was presided over by Sir Wm. Wilcox. Among other notable physicians present were Sir Humphrey Rolleston, the King's Physician, Lord Horder, Physician to the Prince of Wales, Sir James Purvess-Stewart, Sir Henry Lunn, and Sir Ashley Mackintosh.

These men urged the value of fasting in "disease." Sir William Wilson said "the medical profession had been neglectful of the study of dietetics and fasting." Sir Henry Lunn, noted that there were several institutions (nature cure places) in England employing fasting and urged that fasting is not a matter for "unqualified" practitioners. Only a short time prior to this Sir Henry had said in the Daily Mail (London) that the "unqualified practitioners" were the ones who were curing their patients and added, "I am convinced that the result will be that heterodoxy, now claimed as their own possession by various unqualified healers, will become the medical orthodoxy and commonplace of the next generation."

The conference, instead of offering a little praise where it was long overdue, prepared, as Sir Henry had predicted, to steal the thunder of the "Natural Healers," branding these latter as "unqualified."

In 1927 Lord Horder (then Sir Thomas) declared: "I think there is value in the occasional missing of a meal, or in the substitution of a meal, * * * but the elaborate and prolonged process of actual fasting which requires for its proper carrying out a complete or partial cessation from active work has never seemed to me to promise any benefits."

What caused this eminent medical man to change his mind? Only one thing could have forced him to join the conference in endorsing prolonged fasting — namely: the steady stream of recoveries in "incurable" cases which the British Natural Hygienists continue to effect. Are these Natural Hygienists unqualified? Dr. Lief addresses the following questions to Lord Horder in the July, 1933 issue of Health for All:

"Which of these two is better qualified to use fasting as a method of therapy: (1) the practitioner who has studied over many years the special technique of curative fasting, who has administered fasting treatment in very many cases, and so is fully conversant with how to deal with the various crises and reactions that very frequently appear in fasting cases, or (2) the medical doctor, whose profession, as a body, has done nothing for years but condemn fasting, without investigation, and whose present interest in the treatment has only arisen as a result of the remarkable successes and the ensuing popularity of the so-called unqualified man?"

Certainly the study of Materia Medica and years spent in administering drugs cannot qualify one to conduct fasts. No intelligent person can investigate the subject of fasting without endorsing it and without being struck by the marvelous results it produces. But this same intelligence should lead him to fast under the care of one who fully understands fasting in all its details.

I will conclude this introduction with an endorsement of fasting by a physician of the highest standing, who, twenty years after he made the statement below, still endorses and employs fasting.

In 1922 Major Reginald F. E. Austin, M.D., R.A.M.C., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., British Army Medical Service, wrote "some sixteen years experience of the treatment of the sick and ailing with the aid of fasting has convinced me that many of the so-called complications and sequelae of disease are largely the result of forcing nourishment into an organism that is telling one as plainly as it can: 'For heaven's sake keep food away from me until my appetite returns. In the meantime, I will live on my own tissues.'"

Definition of Fasting

CHAPTER I

Nutrition may be conveniently divided into two phases — positive and negative — corresponding to periods of eating and periods of abstaining from food. Negative nutrition has received the terms fasting, inanition, starvation. Fasting and starving are separate phenomenai well demarked from each other. Inanition covers both these processes.

Fast is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word, faest, which means "firm" or "fixed." The practice of going without food at certain times was called fasting, from the Anglo-Saxon, faesten, to hold oneself from food. Like most English words, the word fasting has more than one meaning. Thus, the dictionary defines fasting as "abstinence from food, partial or total, or from proscribed kinds of foods." In most religious fasts abstinence from proscribed foods is all that is meant. We may define it thus: Fasting — is abstention, entirely or in part, and for longer or shorter periods of time, from food and drink or from food alone.

A misuse of the term, fasting, is quite common. I refer to the use of the word fasting when a particular diet is referred to. We read and hear of fruit fasts, water fasts, milk fasts, etc., when talking of a fruit diet, a milk diet, etc. A fruit fast is abstinence from fruit; a milk fast is abstinence from milk; a water fast is abstinence from water.

The dictionary defines a diet as a "regulated course of eating and drinking, a specially prescribed regime. The daily fare, victuals, allowance of food; rations." To "diet" is "to regulate or restrict the food and drink according to a regime; to eat carefully or sparingly. To take food; to eat."

Fasting, as we employ the term, is voluntary and entire abstinence from all food except water. "Little driblet meals," says Dr. Chas. E. Page, "are not fasting. There should not be a mouthful or sip of anything but water, a few swallows of which would be taken from time to time, according to desire." We do not employ the word fasting to describe a diet of fruit juice, for example.

Inanition is a technical term literally meaning emptiness, which is applied to all forms and stages of abstinence from food and to many forms of malnutrition due to various causes, even though the person is eating. Prof. Morgulis classifies three types of inanition according to origin, as follows:

1. "Physiological inanition which is a normal, regular occurrence in nature. The inanition constitutes either a definite phase in the life cycle of the animal, it is a seasonal event, or it accompanies the periodic recurrence of sexual activity." The cases of the salmon and seal and of hibernating animals are examples of this.

2. "Pathological inanition," which is in "various degrees of severity associated with different organic derangements" — obstruction of the alimentary canal (oesophageal stricture)," "inability to retain food (vomiting)," "excessive destruction of body tissues (infectious fevers)," and "refusal to take food either because of loss of appetite or mental disease."

3. "Accidental or Experimental Inanition." "In this category, of course, belong all individual experiences which have been the subject of carefully conducted scientific investigation."

To this should be added a fourth classification, a class with which Prof. Morgulis seems to be very largely unacquainted, which is largely or wholly voluntary but in which abstinence from food is not for mere experimental purposes, but for the promotion or restoration of health. I prefer to call this hygienic fasting. Others refer to it as therapeutic fasting. Fasting of this type is not wholly voluntary in acute "disease," except in the sense that all instinctive action is voluntary. It is the hygienic fast that we are chiefly concerned with in this volume, although we are going to make use of data gained from the other types of fasting that may be of service to us in better understanding and more intelligently conducting a fast.

In his Inanition and Malnutrition, Jackson says the term starvation "is more frequently used to indicate the extreme stages of inanition, leading to death." Unfortunately, this is too often not the case. Too often the term starvation is applied to the whole period of abstinence from food from the first day to the end in death.

Carrington says: "Many doctors speak of 'the fasting or starvation cure' — which simply shows that they don't know what they are talking about. Fasting is an absolutely different thing from starvation. One is beneficial; the other harmful. One is a valuable therapeutic measure; the other a death-dealing experiment." — Physical Culture, May, 1915.

A distinction must be made between fasting and starving, as will be seen as our study proceeds. Fasting is not starving. The difference between fasting and starving is immense and well demarcated. Dr. Hazzard expressed this fact in these words: "Starvation results from food denied, either by accident or design to a system clamoring for sustenance. Fasting consists in intentional abstinence from food by a system suffering from disease and non-desirous of sustenance until rested, cleansed, and ready for the labor of digestion."

Fasting is neither a "hunger cure" nor a "starvation cure," as it is sometimes called. Fasting is not starving. The fasting person is not hungry, and fasting is not a method of treating or curing "disease." Dr. Page says, "The term frequently applied — 'starvation cure' — is both misleading and disheartening to the patient: the fact is he is both starved and poisoned by eating when the hope of digestion and assimilation is prohibited, as is, in great measure, the case in all acute attacks and more especially when there is nausea or lack of appetite."

Fasting is a rest — a physiological vacation. It is not an ordeal nor a penance. It is a house-cleaning measure which deserves to be better known and more widely used.

Fasting Among the Lower Animals

CHAPTER II

In the study of fasting it is necessary that we approach the subject from many angles. Perhaps no subject is less understood by the public and the "healing" professions than this oldest of means of caring for the sick body.

We are justified in studying every phenomenon which may throw light upon the subject and thus enable us to better apply the fast in our dealings with the sick. The fasting habits of man and animals are all legitimate objects of study. Not alone the fasting practices of sick animals, but fasting in healthy animals, whether voluntary or enforced, will aid us in more clearly understanding this subject. Particularly will such a study aid us in overcoming our cultivated fear of fasting. Hence the following studies.

The more one attempts to find out about the habits and modes of living of animals, the more one is impressed with the paucity of our dependable accumulated knowledge of the animal kingdom. Our biologists seem to be more intent upon classification than upon the important phases of life. If they study an animal, they prefer to kill it and dissect it, perhaps to mount it and place it in a case. They are more intent upon a study of death than of life. All unconsciously, perhaps, they have converted biology into necrology. I have, however, after much searching, succeeded in accumulating a considerable amount of material about the fasting habits of many animals. This I here propose to discuss under its various heads, as I have classified it.

FASTING DURING THE MATING SEASON

That some animals fast during the mating season is well known, but our knowledge of the living habits of the animal kingdom is so meager that it is not known how many animals do so. So far as it is at present known, fasting during the breeding season is very rare among mammals and birds. Among mammals where there is keen competition between the males for possession of the females, feeding is curtailed, but this is hardly a fast.

Quite a number of fishes fast during the breeding season, the female of the Cichlidae, or mouth breeders, must fast at this time. — See History of Fishes, by J. R. Norman. The best known example of fasting by fish during the mating season is that of the long fast of the male salmon. Prof. Morgulis describes in these words, the annual fast of the salmon: "At the time they commence to migrate from the sea towards the streams, their muscles are thoroughly encumbered with huge masses of fat. Fasting all their journey, which lasts many weeks and months, they are in a much emaciated condition when they get to the upper reaches of the rivers where the currents are rough and swift. Freed from the fat, however, their muscles are now agile and nimble, and it is at this time that the salmon displays the marvellous endurance and skill admired by all sportsmen, in progressing steadily against all odds of the tumultuous current, waterfalls and obstructions."

Penguins and the male goose are the only birds I find mentioned as fasting during the mating season. The gander loses about one-fourth of his body-weight during this period. George G. Goodwin, Associate Curator, Department of Mammals, The American Museum of Natural History, New York, says: "It is questionable if any of the birds are capable of a prolonged fast — their rate of metabolism is too high. I have never heard that a gander fasted during the mating season and am inclined to question such a statement."

The basis of his questioning is not very solid; he has never heard of it. It may be assumed that if it were true he would have heard of it, but no man knows everything in biology and this is out of his special field. The other part of his objection, the high rate of metabolism of birds, is no basis at all. It only reveals that he knows little of fasting. It is not likely that the rate of metabolism of the male salmon is low while he swims hundreds of miles up-stream. His a priori doubts must be considered, they are not to be taken as final.

The Alaskan fur seal bull is the best known example of fasting by a mammal during the mating season. I have no information on the rate of metabolism in this mammal, but I think we are safe in assuming that, since he is a warm blooded animal and, at the same time, extremely active during the whole of the fasting period, his metabolic rate is high. During the entire three months breeding season of each year, the Alaskan fur seal bull does not eat nor drink (although within easy reach of abundant food) from May or the middle of June to the end of July or early days of August. After fighting for his place on the shore and for his harem of from five to sixty females, the male seal spends the summer fighting to keep his harem together and to keep his girls satisfied. Ray Chapman Andrews says, in his End of the Earth; "All through the summer he neither eats nor sleeps. It is just one long debauch of fighting and love-making and guarding his harem against unscrupulous invaders."

As a result of all this activity, Mr. Andrews says that "by September he is a wreck of his former self. All his fat has disappeared, for that is what he has been living on by absorption all summer. His bones protrude, his side is torn and scarred, he is weary unto death. Blessed sleep is what he needs. Forsaking his harem, he waddles back into the long grass far away from the beach, there to stretch out in the warm sun. He will sleep for three weeks on end without waking, if undisturbed."

After long months of incessant physical and sexual activity, without food, the seal thinks first of rest and sleep. Food may be had after the long sleep. With man, also, despite popular prejudices to the contrary, there are times when rest is of more importance than food.

The sea lion also fasts during the mating season. Although less tempestuous, the domestic life of the sea lion is described as being very similar to that of the fur seals. Coming ashore sometime between the middle of May and early June, the summer is spent in fasting and sexual activities. By the end of summer, the master of the harem is exhausted and has lost much weight, but is still able to wearily slip down the sloping beach into the sea, where a few months of fat living restore his emaciated form. The exertions of these sea lions, both sexual and physical, as they fight much, is described as tremendous. I have no information as to whether they, like the fur-seal bull, go without water during this period.

What may be regarded as fasting during the mating season is the phenomenon seen among many insects which have but a short adult life. The caterpillar does little else than eat. In certain species, after it becomes a butterfly, it never eats at all. Fabre showed that some insects have no provision for hunger, the digestive organs being absent in the fullest developed insects. Perhaps such short-lived species as ephemera should not be considered in this connection. These insects come into the world in the evening, mate, the female lays her eggs and by morning both sexes are dead without ever having seen the sun. Destined for little else than reproduction, they have no mouths and do not eat, neither do they drink. But the peacock butterfly, which often travels for miles in search of a mate and lives for a few days, though it has the merest semblance of a digestive apparatus, does not eat. The insect world presents us with many examples of this kind.

PUPAL SLEEP

The pupal stage of insects which undergo metamorphosis, is that immediately following the larval stage. The term chrysalis has almost the same value as pupa. If the insect is not wholly quiescent during this pupal stage the word nymph is used. Since the larval stage of most insects differs so markedly from the adult stage, the pupal stage constitutes the intermediate stage in which the necessary bodily changes are effected. It is a period of internal transformation, during which most pupa are outwardly quiescent, they move very little, and do not eat at all. The marvellous structural and functional transformations take place during this period of abstinence from food, the pupa depending entirely upon its stored reserves for the accomplishment of its structural revolution. Pupal sleep may be artificially prolonged.

FASTING AFTER BIRTH

Fasts of longer or shorter durations are seen in many animals immediately after birth. For example, Fabre tells us that certain spiders eat no food for the first six months of their lives, but feast upon sunbeams. Chickens take neither food nor water for the first three days after they hatch from the egg. In most mammals there is no milk secreted for three or more days after their young are born. The fluid, secreted during this period is devoid of food value.

FASTING WHEN NOT HUNGRY

Many animals normally go for long periods between feedings, not eating for the reason that they are not hungry. For example, there are many snakes that eat only at long intervals.

FASTING WHEN ANGRY OR EXCITED

An animal will refuse food when angry or excited. Indeed, an animal that is hungry and in the process of eating may be angered and will cease eating. Angry animals do not resume eating again until their anger has subsided. Reports of dogs grieving over the absence or death of their owners, refusing food for long periods, are often carried by the press.

FASTING IN CAPTIVITY

Some animals refuse to eat when held in captivity. They will starve to death rather than live as captives thus making good Patrick Henry's ringing cry: "Give me liberty or give me death." One of these is the famous marine iguana, Amblyrhymchus Cristatus, a seashore lizard, of the Galapagos Islands, described as the "Vegetarian dragon" and "Fasting man." The Iguana feeds on sea-weeds and can abstain from food for long periods — over a hundred days.

EXPERIMENTAL FASTS

Many thousands of animals of all kinds have been employed in experimental fasts. Insects, fishes, snakes, birds, rodents, rabbits, badgers, cows, horses, and many other types of animals have been used in fasts of varying lengths of time. In many of these fasts, the period of abstinence from food has been extended far beyond the normal limit of the fast into the period of starvation, some of them being ended before death occurred, others being carried on to death. While we are opposed to the suffering caused in animals by pushing the period of abstinence beyond the return of hunger, it has been done and the information thus obtained is available, and we are at liberty to make use of it in our studies of the subject. Many of these experimental fasts will be referred to as we proceed in our study.

FASTING WHEN WOUNDED

Biologists, physiologists and research workers of all kinds are very fond of animal experimentation. But all of these workers are in the habit of ignoring important parts of the regular activities of animals. For example, they ignore, never mention, in fact, the numerous instances of dogs and other animals having fasted ten, twenty or more days when they, have received internal injuries or a broken bone. That a sick animal refuses food is well known to all laymen, but physiologists and biologists seem to think that this fact is unworthy, even, of mentioning. Can we not learn from observing the normal and regular activities of animals living normal lives — must we assume that animals are capable of teaching us something only when under artificial conditions, and subjected to processes that they never encounter in the normal course of their existence?

Dr. Oswald tells of a dog that had been put into the loft of a barn by the sergeant of a cavalry regiment. Losing its balance, while in the door of the loft and barking, it fell, turning a few somersaults as it came down, and landed on the hard pavement, "with a crack that seemed to have broken every bone in his body." He says "blood was trickling from his mouth and nose when we picked him up, and the troopers advised me to 'put him out of his misery,' but he was my little brother's pet, and, after some hesitation, I decided to take him home in a basket and give the problem of his care the benefit of a fractional chance. Investigation proved that he had broken two legs and three ribs, and judging by the way he raised his head and gasped for air, every now and then, it seemed probable that his lungs had been injured."

For twenty days and twenty nights the little terrier stuck to life in its cotton-lined basket without touching a crumb of solid food, but ever ready to take a few drops of water, in preference even to milk or soup. At the end of the third week it broke its fast with a saucerful of sweet milk, but only on the evening of the twenty-sixth day did it begin to betray any interest in a plateful of meat scraps.

Irwin Liek, noted German physician and surgeon, tells of instinctive fasting in three of his dogs. One of these had been run over by a truck which had broken several bones and injured it internally. The other had "devoured a considerable quantity of rat poison. It became very, very ill, suffered from diarrhea containing blood and pus" and "collapsed completely." The third lost an eye while "mixing it" with a cat. All three of these dogs fasted and recovered.

Physiologists have persistently ignored cases where dogs have voluntarily fasted for ten or twenty or more days when suffering from broken bones or internal injuries. Here is an action invariably pursued by nature which they persist in refusing to investigate.

It is said that the elephant, if wounded, and still able to travel, will go along with the rest of the herd and can be found supporting itself beside a tree while the remainder of the herd enjoys a hearty meal. The wounded elephant is totally oblivious to the excellent food all around him. He obeys an instinct as unerring as the one that brings the bee to his hive; an instinct which is common to the whole animal world, man included.

FASTING IN DISEASE

I need but devote little space to a discussion of what every one already knows; namely, that the sick animal refuses all food. The farmer knows that his "foundered" horse will not eat — is "off his feed," as he expresses it. The sick cat, dog, cow or other animal refuses food. Animals will abstain from food when sick for days and weeks, refusing all food that may be offered them until they are well.

Dr. Felix Oswald says: "Serious sickness prompts all animals to fast. Wounded deer will retire to some secluded den and starve for weeks together." Dr. Erwin Liek, endorses fasting and observes that "small children and animals, guided by an infallible instinct, limit to the utmost their intake of food if they are sick or injured."

Arthur Brisbane disapproved of fasting and took Mr. Sinclair to task for advocating it. After a lengthy correspondence about the matter, Mr. Brisbane acknowledged that "even dogs fast when they are ill." Sinclair retorted, "I look forward to the time when human beings may be as wise as dogs."

A dog or cat, if sick or wounded, will crawl under the wood shed or retire to some other secluded spot and rest and fast until well. Occasionally he will come out for water. These animals will, when wounded or sick, persistently refuse the most tempting food when offered to them. Physical and physiological rest and water are their remedies.

A sick cow or horse will also refuse food. The author has seen this in many hundreds of cases. In fact, all nature obeys this instinct. Thus does nature teach us that the way to feed in acute "disease" is not to do it.

Domestic cattle may often be found suffering from some chronic "disease." Such animals invariably consume less food than the normal animal. Every stockman knows that when a cow, or horse, or hog, or sheep, etc., persistently refuses food, or day after day consumes much less than normally, there is something wrong with that animal.

FOOD SCARCITY

I need devote but little space to the fact that animals fast for shorter or longer periods in times of food scarcity when floods, droughts, storms, etc., destroy their food supplies, or when snow has covered their food and rendered it temporarily inaccessible. It often happens in the lives of animals that they are forced to go for days at a time without food for the reason that they cannot find it. They sometimes, though relatively rarely, perhaps, go so long without food that they die of starvation. Luckily, they possess sufficient reserves to enable them to go without food for prolonged periods and survive. Animals that enter the winter season with considerable fat, commonly emerge from winter rather thin due to the fact that they are forced to subsist on greatly reduced food supplies and often have to go for days at a time without food. Even at the height of the food season insects may so completely destroy the food supply that many animals are forced to go for considerable periods without food.

FASTING IN ACCIDENTAL IMPRISONMENT

A number of accidental emergencies force both domestic and wild animals to fast at times. How frequently such accidents occur in nature, we are not in a position to say, but they are probably more frequent than we may suppose.

In his Curiosities of Instinct, Karl Vogt tells of the case of a spaniel which visitors had accidentally locked up in the attic of an old castle-ruin. The dog had been able to secure a few drops of water by gnawing the edge of a cleft in a slate covered roof. A few heavy rain-showers had supplied him with water, but he had had no food of any kind — no grain, leather, rats or mice — during the whole summer and part of the autumn. A picnic on the castle mountain during the first week in October resulted in his rescue by a wandering party of sight-seers. The ribs of the little prisoner; who had been locked up since the middle of June, could be counted as easily as in a skeleton, but he was still able to drag himself across the floor and lick the hands of his deliverers.

The following account of "Bum" appeared in Time for April 27, 1931: "When Joseph Carroll, engineer of a Brooklyn laundry, heard the Negro night watchman tell of a "ghost" he had heard one night last week, he walked into the engine room and straight to a boarded-up hole in the floor, relic of an unsuccessful well-digging. Stopping his ears, holding a knife in his teeth, he touched the knife to a pipe which went downward. Presently he could hear a distant moaning. "He knew what was in the hole. Early in January he had found and adopted a mongrel puppy. But after a few days the puppy, which he called 'Bum' disappeared. The same day, the hole over the excavation had been boarded up securely. The engine's noise must have drowned the dog's cries ever since.

"Hastily Engineer Carroll ripped up the board, descended, brought Bum, a skeletal dog, unable to stand alone, to the surface.

"No local veterinary would believe that a dog could have fasted for 14 weeks. Some thought Bum must have lived by rat-catching; some cried: 'Impossible'!"

Local veterinarians were as ignorant of fasting as was a medical man who once roundly scored a woman who had undertaken to fast, under my direction, after he and several of his big priced colleagues (specialists and medical professors) had declared they did not know and could not find out what her trouble was and could do nothing for her. He declared that if she went six days without food her heart would collapse and she would die.

She had two fasts, one of twelve days, the other of thirteen, and recovered her health. The doctor came crawling back some three months later and apologized for his ungentlemanly and unprofessional conduct. "I have been reading up on these cases and I find that in Germany they are using fasting in them with excellent success," he said.

An Associated Press dispatch from Warsaw, Ind., dated Dec. 31, 1931, tells of a sow surviving four and a half months without food. Buried under an avalanche of straw on the Oscar Rebman farm, east of Warsaw, on July 15, while threshing was in progress, she remained buried until Dec. 30, when workmen who were pulling out straw heard a grunt and were surprised to see the sow walk out minus about half of her former weight. This was a period of 168 days without food and water.

The "Great Blizzard of '49" was so terrible that many men, women and children and much livestock in the West froze to death. Many sheep froze around the haystacks. Unusually heavy snows fell and in some places remained for long periods. The snow was deep and animals were buried. Several reports of animals being buried deep in the snow for long periods were published. These are of special interest to us here, for the reason that these buried animals were deprived of food and of all possibility of obtaining food by the snow that covered them.

An Associated Press dispatch from Rapid City, S. D. tells of a pig found fifty-four days after the blizzard in that state. The dispatch says that before the blizzard of Jan. 2, 1949 struck, Jess Sparks, a farmer who lived northwest of Rapid City had twenty-one pigs. After the storm was over he could find but twenty of his pigs. He gave up, as lost, the missing pig. Forty-four days after the snow storm had buried the pig, Mr. Sparks heard a grunt. Digging through several feet of snow he soon released the pig, which walked out under its own power and, although very thin, did not resume eating at once.

A similar incident was reported by Jack Stotts of Cody, Wyo., who dug out a straw-stack that had been buried twenty feet deep for sixty-three days and found two Hereford heifers a little wobbly but otherwise in good condition. John Lemke, a farmer, in Dupress, S. D., dug out a sow that had been buried for three months. At the time of her burial she weighed three hundred pounds. She was skinny when rescued, but able to walk three quarters of a mile to a feed trough.

On the Wm. Brandt farm near Fort Morgan, Colo., a sheep was found alive on Feb. 12, 1949, after having been entombed in a snowdrift for forty days, having been hemmed against a high board fence by the big blizzard that struck in early January. A companion sheep was dead. The two sheep had eaten away a small portion of a wooden fence. Other than this, they had no food while buried in the snow.

These are examples of burial of domestic animals. Wild animals must also frequently be buried by the snow and must remain for shorter or longer periods in their prisons. How many examples of burials similar to the foregoing burials of domestic animals that blizzard would have afforded, had they been recorded, we can only surmise. As the snow of the blizzard blanketed many thousands of square miles of territory, wild life could not have escaped it. Small animals especially were buried. They were forced to live without eating during their burial. The ability of an animal to fast for long periods under such conditions, means the difference between surviving and perishing.

Rabbits are well-known to be frequently buried in the snow. If we could know just how often such things occur in nature and how many hundreds of thousands of animals are thus forced to go without food for considerable periods each year, we would probably find that the ability to fast is a very important means of survival.

HIBERNATION

All animals adapt themselves in some manner to the winter season. Winter is a difficult period for many plants and animals in northern countries. With its short days, low temperature, stormy weather, scarcity of food both animals and plants are faced with the problem of keeping alive under very unfavorable circumstances. Both animals and plants have found many solutions to this problem, adapting themselves to winter in a wide variety of ways. Migration, as by birds, is but one of many solutions animals nave found tor this perplexing problem. Birds that migrate may lead a life as active in their southern homes as they do in their northern homes in the Spring and Summer. This is not so of animals that do not migrate.

Some animals store away supplies of food for this period. Bees store up honey, squirrels store away nuts, the mouse stores away food in various caches, the beaver stores twigs, gophers and chipmunks store up roots and nuts on which they feed when they awaken on an occasional warm day. On the colder days, these sleep and take no food. This is to say, many animals that store away food in various caches fast much during the winter months.

Other animals store their food supplies within themselves. These internal food supplies serve the animal as well as do the caches of food stored outside the body by other animals. We may say, then, that some animals store up their winter food supply within themselves. Hibernation by those animals that depend upon internal stores during the winter season is the solution for the exigencies of winter that has been adopted by more forms of life than any other solution. Bats, mice, hedgehogs, woodchucks, toads, newts, lizards, snakes, snails, flies, wasps, bees, and the great hosts of insects, bears, crocodiles, alligators, and many other animals do not migrate, but go into winter quarters. Animals that store up food outside themselves also carry internal supplies, for they, too, are often forced to go for extended periods without food. Squirrels, for example, frequently forget where they have buried their store of nuts.

Hibernation is a dormant state of existence, accompanied by greatly diminished respiration, circulation and metabolism, in which animals in the temperate regions spend the winter. During this period the animal functions are nearly suspended; the body heat is lowered to or nearly that of the air, the action of the heart is much reduced and the animal loses from thirty to forty percent of its weight. During hibernation the mammal may not feed, depending entirely on the stored food reserves within the body. The evidence at hand indicates that in such instances the body weight may drop as much as fifty per cent. Indeed, in bats, it drops more than this. In other animals food is stored within their winter nest and the hibernating animal awakens from time to time to consume its food.

Writing in The National Geographic Magazine (July 1946) under the title "Mystery Mammals of the Twilight," Donald R. Griffin says that hibernation of bats and other animals is still in many respects a mystery to biologists." Mystery or not, it is a common fact of nature and represents one of the means adopted by animals to adapt them to the exigencies of winter.

Hibernation is most common in cold-blooded animals that are unable to leave regions of severe winters, but it is also practiced by numerous warm-blooded animals. Some biologists say that the term hibernation should be restricted to a few mammals and prefer the phrase "lying low and saying nothing" for what they describe as the coma or lethargy of many of the lower animals, like some frogs and fishes, many snails and insects. Other biologists, although seeming to prefer to limit the term hibernation to the "winter sleep" of warmblooded animals, also include under this term, the "seasonal torpidity" of frogs, toads, reptiles, certain fishes, insects, the horseshoe crab and snails.

Among the many different forms of "lying low" seen in the winter life of animals are:

1. The relapsed life of some insect pupae, where the body of the larva (i.e., maggot) has become greatly simplified in structure; in fact almost embryonic again.

2. The arrested development of other insect larvae, such as caterpillars and pupae, where the metamorphosis into the winged form has ceased for the time being, like a stopped watch.

3. The suspended animation of small creatures, like bear animalcules (some of them quaintly like microscopic hippopotami) and wheel animalcules and small thread worms, in which we can detect no vitality for the time being.

4. The comatose state of snails and frogs, where we can see the heart beating, though the life of the body as a whole is at a very low ebb.

5. The state of true hibernation, restricted to a few mammals, such as hedgehog and dormouse, marmot and bat. This is a peculiar state very unlike normal sleep, with most of their vital functions, even excretion, in abeyance, with the heart beating very feebly and the breathing movements scarcely perceptible.

In all of these forms of 'lying low" the animals hide away and cease their activities and approach a state of suspended animation during the winter months. Hibernation, so common among animals appears, then, to be one aspect of the general tendency of animals to withdraw from an unfavorable environment. In hibernation the animal passes through the unfavorable period of low temperature and food scarcity in a dormant state. Thus hibernation, like migration, is one of the means of solving the food problem during the period of acute scarcity.

Mammals that hibernate are referred to by certain biologists as "imperfectly warm-blooded types," which are unable to produce enough animal heat to make good their losses in cold weather. It is doubtful if this is true of those species in which only the female hibernates. Food scarcity, rather than depressed temperature, seems to be the chief reason for hibernation. As estivation is practically identical with hibernation, only taking place under certain opposite conditions (when it is hot rather than cold) but where, as in hibernation, there is food scarcity, those mammals that estivate cannot be said to be "imperfectly warm-blooded types." The example of the tenree, that estivates at the time for estivation, even when far removed from its Madagascar home and placed where the temperature is warm and there is an abundance of food, would seem to indicate that there is more to this phenomenon than merely the external circumstances under which it occurs.

Hibernation resembles sleep and has been likened to a trance, but it is not sleep. The hibernating animal does sleep all or most of the time it hibernates, but hibernation is different from sleep. Sleep is not seasonal and is not occasioned by scarcity of food. Hibernation is prolonged and body temperature drops very low in this state whereas it tends to remain normal in sleep. Heart beat and respiration are very low in hibernation, they are reduced but slightly in sleep. Excretion is suspended in hibernation, it may be increased in sleep. There is great loss of weight during hibernation, in sleep there may be a gain of tissue. Hibernation is confined to the cold season, sleep takes place throughout the year, both at night and in the day time and lasts but a tew minutes to a few hours at a time. Griffin says that the "torpor of hibernation is much more prolonged than ordinary sleep."

Is it correct to refer to hibernation as a comatose condition? Is the animal in a coma? Is the hibernation state one of torpor, lethargy, stupor? These terms are frequently used by biologists in describing the hibernating condition. Coma is defined as an "abnormal deep stupor occurring in illness or as a result of it," such as alcoholic coma, apoplectic coma, uremic coma, diabetic coma, coma vigil, etc. It would be interesting to know what a normal coma is. Stupor is defined as a "condition of unconsciousness, torpor, stupor. A state analogous to hypnotism, or the first stage of hypnotism." It is seen in African sleeping sickness, encyphalitis lethargica, hysteria and other pathological states. Torpor is "numbness, abnormal inactivity, dormancy, apathy." Torpid means "not acting vigorously, sluggish." Biologists use such terms as coma, comatose, lethargic, stupor, trance, etc., in describing hibernation as though there is something essentially pathological about it.

Dormant is perhaps the better word, as the root dor means sleep, although, as previously pointed out, hibernation is not synonymous with sleep. Dormant means "being in a state resembling sleep, inactive, unused." That hibernation does resemble sleep in many particulars is certain; that the hibernating animal is even more inactive than in sleep is equally true. Perhaps we can define hibernation as a dormant state of existence accompanied with greatly diminished respiration, circulation and metabolism in which many animals in the temperate regions pass the winter.

In hibernation the animal seeks out a secluded nook or burrow or a cave, where the temperature is higher than that outside and sinks into a strange reptile-like state. There it lies, or as in the case of the bat, hangs, in safety through the cold and storm. It eats nothing, it excretes nothing, the heart beats feebly, the breathing movements are scarcely perceptible — yet it survives. Indeed, it seems certain that it would not survive otherwise. Thus, hibernation viewed biologically, is seen to be an adaptation to the cold of winter by which the animal is enabled to survive.

Danger lies in sub-freezing weather for the hibernating mammal and many are frozen to death where their place of abode becomes too cold. Griffin says of the bat: "Another important requirement also usually satisfied by caves and burrows is that the temperature should not go below freezing. Apparently no mammal can survive freezing when it is hibernating and its body temperature is at the mercy of the surrounding air temperature." He tells of finding bats in caves, the openings of which are great enough to permit freezing, frozen up in huge ice stalactites. Most of the bats, he says, awaken and fly away to another and better sheltered cave, when the cave in which they are hibernating begins to get cold.

HIBERNATION IN PLANTS

Perhaps before we give our attention to hibernation among animals we may profitably take a hasty glance at the hibernating practices of plants. The "winter sleep" of trees, shrubs and many other plants is seen on every hand during winter. With the approach of Fall, these shed their leaves, their sap descends and they exist in a dormant state until the coming of Spring. In like manner bulbs, tubers, etc., undergo a prolonged "winter sleep." These plants fast through the whole of the winter months, taking no food during the time. They take no carbon and nitrogen from the air and extract no minerals and nitrates from the soil. Metabolism is practically non-existent during this period. The cessation of the flow of sap in trees during the winter season is similar to the almost ceasing of circulation in hibernating animals. Plants like the daffodil, onion, beet, turnip, etc., store up large supplies of food in their roots — bulbs and tubers — during the Summer. Their tops die off in the late Fall or early Winter and they lie dormant during the long Winter, only to send up new stems and leaves when Spring arrives. This storing up of food in their roots is similar to the storing of fat by the bear.

HIBERNATION IN ANIMALS

Hibernation is common among insects and is seen in every group of vertebrates except birds, which substitute migration for hibernation. It is largely found in insect and vegetable eating species. Hibernation occurs regularly throughout the winter in such invertebrates as snails, crustaceans, myriapods, insects, arachnids, and the lower vertebrates, such as reptiles, amphibians and some fresh-water fishes. Many mammals inhabiting the colder regions, especially species living on the ground, or whose principle sources of food are unavailable in the winter, are known to hibernate. In such hibernating animals as the bat, ground-squirrel, marmot, hedgehog, or dormouse, the temperature of the body drops from its typical warm condition to one or two degrees Centigrade above that of the surrounding air. In maximum dormancy the heart-rate is slowed considerably, sometimes to only one or two percent of the normal heart rate, the respiratory movements drop off to a similar extent and determination of oxygen consumption indicates a reduction to as low as three to five per cent of normal consumption.

During hibernation the animal may not feed, depending entirely upon the stored food reserves within his body. The evidence at hand indicates that in such cases the body weight may drop as much as fifty per cent. In other cases food is stored within the winter nest and the hibernating animal awakens from time to time to consume its food. In winter there are periods of fasting in those animals that hibernate only in a limited sense. Mice and squirrels, for example, that store food for the winter, often sleep for days at a time, without eating.

HIBERNATION BY BEARS

The bear is a typical hibernator, although not all bears hibernate. For example, the American grizzly bear does not. In the Himalayan or Asiatic black bear, hibernation is not complete as the bear comes out on warm winter days to feed. The brown bear, on the other hand, hibernates. In several species of bear only the female dens up in winter and appears to undergo a partial hibernation during which the young are born, the young cubs and the emaciated mother emerging in the Spring. The Polar bear is an example of this kind. The black bear, native to North America, gives birth to two or three cubs while hibernating. At birth these cubs are naked and blind, and are but eight inches long. Hibernating bears are believed not to attain full dormancy.

The big black bear of northern Russia retires to a bed of leaves and moss about the end of November and "sleeps," if not disturbed, until about the middle of March; living during this time, upon the nutritive supplies stored in his own tissues. The fat, or well-fed bear will begin to fast some weeks before he retires to his den for his long winter's "sleep." Disturb him in the latter part of February and he will be instantly awake and alert, and will attack the intruder with a fury which has given rise to the expression, "as savage as a waked winter bear."

HIBERNATION IN RODENTS

Nearly all the burrowing rodents hibernate. Notable exceptions are gophers, chipmunks and squirrels which store up roots and nuts on which they feed when an occasional warm day induces them to arouse. On the colder days even these hibernate. The prairie dog and squirrel are said to be partial hibernators. In the northern part of his range the badger hibernates during the winter. He passes through a long winter without eating. After an absolute fast of ten weeks he will trot for miles in search of acorns or roots which he may then be forced to dig out of the half-frozen ground.

The dormouse (sleeping mouse) a term applied in the old world to a small squirrel-like rodent and in the U.S. to the common white-footed mouse is a long "sleeper" but seems not to "sleep" as deeply nor to be as far from consciousness as some other hibernating mammals. He makes himself very comfortable by weaving a thick network of dry grass into his winter bedclothes. This is so neatly and skillfully designed that it keeps in the heat and, yet permits a fair amount of air slowly to filter through. So carefully does he fill up the hole in his warm light wrapping, after he goes inside, there is no hint of a joint or a weak place. Here he spends a long winter of five months in deep "sleep" with no food and often loses more than forty per cent of his weight during this period.

HIBERNATION AMONG BATS

The hibernating habits of different species of bats differ so much that it is difficult to generalize. There is some evidence that some bats migrate upon the approach of winter, but most of them hibernate. Bats live on winged insects and must catch their prey in the air. Their feeding days are limited, except in the South, where insects fly about for a longer season. Indeed, their feeding days must be very short if frost comes early in Autumn. Their period of hibernation may be more than half a year. Their death-like inactivity is made necessary because of the need to make their meagre supply of stored food hold out over such a long period of time. In the long winters of the north, hibernation often means going without food for five, six and seven months. If bats are to survive, it is essential that their food resources be made to hold out as long as possible.

Bats cluster in masses, usually in caves, old barns, and other places that offer protection from the inclemencies of winter. The hibernating bat appears in all respects dead. Its temperature sinks very low, its heart beats so feebly it is barely perceptible, and it takes long to awaken from its sleep. One naturalist describes the "winter sleep" of bats in the following words: "Most bats when fallen into their winter sleep look dead as nearly as may be. They grow cold, their heart beats feebly, and when they hang themselves head downward on some dusty beam or crouch in some smouldering wood, they might be taken for lumps of leather. Nothing about them suggests a living creature, and no one would imagine for a moment that they would presently be flying with a dash and a skill and a command of quick turns beyond the power of a bird."

Griffin says of the hibernating bat, "the heart rate slows to a point where it cannot be detected. Breathing almost ceases. The blood moves sluggishly. The body temperature falls almost to that of the surroundings.

"Bats hibernating in a cave where the air temperature is 33° F. may have a body temperature of 33.5° F. They feel cold to handle, and are stiff and unresponsive. It requires close observation to distinguish a hibernating bat from a dead one."

There is evidence that bats may awaken spontaneously during the winter and fly around in their cave, even in rare instances, flying considerable distances to other caves. Griffin says that "they are not continuously dormant throughout the whole winter. On successive visits to the same cave we usually found the bats in different parts of the passages, even when they were not disturbed on the previous visit. Probably they wake up from time to time and fly about a bit, perhaps occasionally wandering out of the cave to see whether spring has come yet, and then hang themselves up again for another long sleep." "Flying from cave to cave in winter seems to be a rare occurrence, but we obtained three returns of banded bats which had flown 55 to 125 miles from one cave to another during a single winter."

HIBERNATION IN COLD-BLOODED ANIMALS

While hibernating mammals seek caves, dens or hollow logs, usually making themselves dens of dry leaves or grass to sleep through the winter, the lower orders remain buried throughout the winter with the body temperature approximately that of the external environment, and with great decrease in metabolism. Reptiles hide away among stones or pits or caves, often coiling together, to form a huge, inert mass. Frogs, lizards, salamanders and certain fishes bury themselves in the earth below the reach of frost, the aquatic (forms digging into the mud at the bottom of the stream. The few fishes which are known to lie dormant and take no food, sink into the mud of the streams or of the sea. Some fish, as the carp, lie quiet on mud bottoms. The horseshoe crab buries into the mud beyond the reach of oyster dredges in November, remaining in deep water until the middle of Spring. Because snakes hibernate so deep below the ground that frost never reaches them, they live further north than any other reptile. Spiders and snails hibernate under stones, moss, etc., while slugs bury themselves in the mud and muscles and other molluscs living in the streams and lakes, descend into the mud.

As cold weather comes and winter approaches the purely aquatic species of frogs take to the water and burrow into the moist mud at the bottom of the ponds below the frost line. Here they hibernate throughout the winter, becoming cold and dormant, where the climate is severe, until revived in the Spring. Others bore into the soil, or beneath the fallen leaves, or into the rotting stumps, etc., and exist quietly and dormant until the coming of warm weather and food. During this period, most of the life activities of the frog cease. The heart beats very slowly and there is little evidence of life. The frog does not breathe through its lungs during this period but takes in oxygen through its skin. Toads also hibernate through winter. Hibernating frogs and toads take no food, being dependent during this time on the food reserves stored in their bodies as fat and glycogen. All activities are suspended except those necessary to maintain life, such as the beating of the heart. Metabolism is much reduced, little oxygen is required, and respiration takes place entirely through the skin. Many other amphibians bury themselves in mud, this being particularly true of those that estivate during the dry season.

Lizards residing in the temperate zones hibernate during the winter. Here in the Southwest, the great variety of lizards, some brilliantly colored, others dull and drab, like the noted horned toad, that one sees in the Summer months, is almost bewildering. Upon the approach of Winter they disappear. They may be found under boards, piles of straw, logs, etc., dormant and almost incapable of activity. If placed near a fire and made warm, they become as active as in the Summer months.

Newts are more difficult to find than lizards, but if one digs into the hole, often far down into the ground, where a newt is spending the winter, one may find a black shriveled object that is scarcely recognizable.

The snail prepares a really tough defense for itself. It seeks a hiding place, preferring a damp and rather warm atmosphere, and when ensconced in its new home, manufactures from its own juices a chalky secretion covering the mouth of its cell. By puffing from its lungs it separates this covering from contact with itself. This defensive covering is porous to the air so that the sleeping snail can breathe. It then shrinks into the deep recesses of its shell instead of filling out the whole of it. Here it spends the winter in sleep, taking no food during the whole of this period.

HIBERNATION OF INSECTS

Most insects hibernate in the larval or pupal stage. The larvae of many caterpillars hatch in Summer and sleep all Winter. A few insects, as certain moths, butterflies and beetles, hibernate in the adult stage. Caterpillars hide under moss, the bark of trees, etc., but they freeze solid and may be broken into pieces like an icicle; they gradually thaw out in the Spring, but when the changes are sudden, great numbers die. In Europe insects pass the winter, not as adults, but in the pupa stage, well wrapped up in a cocoon.

The queen bumble bee makes for herself a hole in the ground, the sides of which she polishes very thoroughly. She goes into this winter home in early October and does not come out for five months or more. She shifts her position and has moments of restlessness but does not take food. She sleeps through all or most of her period of hibernation.

Queen wasps, though preferring a hole behind a piece of loose bark or in the wood of a decaying tree, employ a greater variety of hiding places than does the bumble bee, and retire in September. They are wide awake and active if the weather becomes warm.

INITIATION AND DURATION OF HIBERNATION

In general the time of the initiation of hibernation corresponds closely with the scarcity of food and lowering of temperature. The termination coincides with the return of favorable conditions. Some species, or some individuals, however, may commence the hibernating period while factors are still quite favorable, or may terminate the period at an unfavorable time. Modern theories of the mechanism stress the physiological sequence of events characteristic of the process. These events may apparently be set into activity under any one of several external conditions.

In temperate climates bears eat more, especially of flesh in the Fall, as they are laying up a store of food in preparation for their winter hibernation. They literally gorge themselves on foods which they convert into fat, but when they enter the dormancy period, stomach and intestines are empty.

Hibernating animals may be induced to awaken readily by "strong external conditions." Following awakening, there is gradual elevation of body temperature and a regaining of normal physiological activity and behaviour. Lowering the temperature of the body to approximately 0° C. (32° F.) has been reported to awaken hibernating mammmals, though some investigators report that animals may often be killed by freezing without awakening.

Just as there are some migratory birds that do not return home until May and leave again in August, so some hibernating animals do not come out of their dark quarters for as many as seven months. Their hibernating period is one of complete fasting. In general, the period of hibernation corresponds with the period of cold and food scarcity.

METABOLISM DURING HIBERNATION

In cold-blooded animals in a state of hibernation metabolism is almost at a complete standstill. Indeed, in some of them, as well as in frozen caterpillars, it must be at a complete standstill. Not so the metabolism of warm-blooded animals. These must maintain a minimum of physiological activity and keep up a certain amount of body heat, or freeze to death. At the same time, they must maintain metabolism at as low a level as is compatible with continued existence, else their food reserves may be exhausted before the end of winter, at which time they will also die of freezing.

The low rate of metabolism in the hibernating bat, manifest by slow respiration, slow heart action and sluggish circulation, means a very slow use of nutritive reserves. The same slow circulation, slow heart action and lessened rate of breathing seen in the hibernating bear also mean the same slow consumption of reserves. Exhaustion of reserves before the return of warm weather would result in death from starvation.

Griffin says that "in spite of the low level to which the metabolic processes have fallen, a hibernating bat will awaken in a few minutes if handled or even disturbed by lights and talking. Once awake, the bat is as lively and active as ever. His temperature, circulation, and respiration have returned to normal." Were this activity continued, exhaustion of food stores would rapidly result. He tells us that "after flying around for a few minutes they hang up again and relapse into the torpor of hibernation."

Mr. Griffin tells us that the metabolic rate of an animal in hibernation depends on the temperature of his surroundings: "he will burn more fat at a higher temperature, just as any chemical reaction is speeded up by a rise in temperature." This is not good physiology and I doubt the correctness of his statement. He, himself, shows that the hibernating bat may be awakened and become active, his temperature, circulation and respiration becoming normal in spite of the low temperature of his surroundings. I think we must regard hibernation as a function of life that is vitally controlled and not absolutely determined by the temperature of the surrounding air. The control of metabolism is from within and not from without. There is a purposive conserving of food stores, not a mere passive non-use of these.

We witness, not a mere slowing down of "chemical reactions" by a lowering of temperature, but a reduction of physiological activities by a process somewhat analogous to sleep. By his own showing, these physiological activities are not helpless in the grip of temperature. They are speeded up or slowed down by the bat in the same temperature. Mr. Griffin may be a biologist, but he talks like a chemist. He thinks of the bat in terms of test-tubes, reagent bottles, retorts, etc., and not as a living organism that takes an active part in the control of its behavior.

The bat is not a cold-blooded animal and, even in hibernation, with metabolism reduced to the lowest point compatible with continued life, is able to maintain a body temperature slightly higher than that of its surroundings. It is able to increase or decrease its metabolism in the same temperature. It can be active or dormant in the same temperature. Hibernation seems to be an adjustment to certain environmental conditions — the absence of food supply seems to be more important in inducing this state than the reduction of temperature — rather than a passive yielding to outside influences. The reduction of metabolism is not the result of cold, but the result of the need to conserve food reserves. Oxydation in the animal body, while a chemical process, is a rigidly controlled process. The body does not start to burn and just continue to burn until it is consumed. The body's fat stores do not catch fire on hot days and go up in flames. Even in the hottest weather the fasting animal reduces its metabolic rate and conserves its food reserves. As a matter of fact, non-hibernating animals conserve their food reserves better in hot than in cold weather. This is due to the fact that more heat must be produced in cold weather to maintain normal body temperature. This "chemical reaction" is not speeded up by a rise in temperature; for, internally, there is no rise in temperature, though the surface of the body may feel chilly and the faster may complain of being cold even in hot weather.

It would be interesting to know what is the internal temperature of the bat in hibernation. It is, no doubt, much lower than in the active state. But the question remains to be answered: Is lowered, temperature due to reduced metabolism, or is lowered metabolism due to lowered temperature?

If the lowering of temperature comes from without and is responsible for the reduction of metabolism, it would seem to be impossible for the bat to arouse itself or be aroused from its state of "torpor" by anything short of an increase of temperature. So long as the temperature of the cave is thirty-three degrees, Fahrenheit, that of the bat should remain nearly as low and "torpor" should persist. It could not fly out of its cave to see if Spring has arrived, or more accurately, perhaps, to see if there is a food supply in evidence. If control is from without, the bat should be helpless until the control — temperature — is changed. Only the coming of warm weather should awaken him. Bats leaving a cave and flying to another when its temperature starts to drop to too low levels shows that the reduction of their metabolism is not a result of lowered temperature. For, if it were, a further lowering of temperature would further decrease metabolism and make it impossible for the bat to awaken and fly in search of a more sheltered abode.

The fact that some species commence their period of hibernation while the temperature is still relatively high and food is still to be had, indicates that the control of metabolism is from within, not from without. The hibernating animal is not helpless in the grip of external conditions.

AESTIVATION

Aestivation is similar to hibernation, if, indeed, it is not identical with it. If hibernation is to be called "winter sleep," aestivation may be with equal propriety, called "summer sleep." In zoology, it is defined as a state of reduced metabolic activity in which certain animals become quiescent. It is a resting interval associated with warm, dry periods in areas that have alternating wet and dry seasons. Animals are induced to aestivate when drought and heat interfere with their activities. With their bent for pathological interpretations, biologists also define aestivation as "the state of torpidity induced in animals by excessive dry heat." Physiological and physical quiescence should not be mistaken for a state of torpor. The same objections to calling it sleep that we made in the case of hibernation are also valid with reference to aestivation.

Aestivation is seen chiefly in the tropics during the long, hot, dry season, when food is scarce and vegetation is taking a rest. A few animals in the temperate zones, especially in the desert regions, also aestivate. Alligators, snakes, certain mammals, as taurec, insects and land snails become dormant.

During the dry season in the tropics the pools and streams dry up. The crocodiles aestivate in Summer, "sleeping" through the dry season without feeding or emerging from the mud in which they have buried themselves. It is said that they are able to "sleep" in this almost "lifeless" state for a whole year. The alligators, the American division of the crocodile family, hibernate in this country very much like frogs, but in the tropics they aestivate. When water is no longer obtainable the South American alligator, and some other animals, bury themselves in the mud, reduce their physiological activities to a bare minimum, while the earth above them is baked into a hard crust. When the rains come again, they resume activity, and come forward renewed by their long fast and rest.

Certain fish are able, when the pools and streams dry up, to burrow deep down into the mud and lie there until the coming of the rainy season. The mud-fish of Australia is an example of these fish, but many examples exist in the dry arid countries where summer, rather than winter, is the "hard time." Indeed, if we are to judge by the fish that may be found in a dry pond after a heavy rain, we may have such fish in this country. The lungfishes, Protoperis of Africa and Lipidosiren of South America, live in mud cocoons during the dry season. When the rice fields which it inhabits dry up during the drought, the spearhead fish, Opiocephidae, buries itself in the mud. Natives of Indo-Malaya "fish" for these animals with digging implements. The African lungfish digs into mud almost two feet, curls its tail around its body which becomes covered with mucus, and there exists, drawing air through a long tube and living on the breakdown of body fat and tail.

During droughts, planarians (flatworms) and leeches (annelids} bury themselves in mud. Small crustaceans, mollusks, etc., that are found in the pools and patches of water that frequently form in the desert, bury themselves deep in the clay or baked mud, when these pools dry up, and activate for long periods. Turtles activate in mud, while lizards and snakes retire to crevices. The Iberian water turtle hides under rocks.

Frogs burrow into mud and exist for months in its sunbaked hardness. During periods of aestivation frogs can survive the loss of half their body moisture. Certain Australian frogs become distended with water during the wet season and use this stored water during the aestivating period. This storing of water by these frogs is similar to the storage of fat by hibernating animals.

Birds are not known to activate, but a number of mammals, such as aardvark, Orycteropus, and some lemurs, Chirogale millii and Microcebus, undergo periods of quiescence.

Most prominent among aestivating animals of America are the land snails, although frogs, slugs, some fishes and other aquatic and semi-aquatic animals also aestivate. When the dry season comes, land snails secrete a membrane-like substance (epiphram), across the openings of their shells, leaving a small opening for the admission of air in breathing. Some snails secrete several diaphragms across the opening of their shells. There is an Australian snail that plugs the mouth of its shell with a morsel of clay before entering upon its period of aestivation. After a prolonged shower snails become active. Aestivating desert snails have been known to revive and crawl about after years in the dormant state. Records show that the African snail, Helix desertorum, may remain in aestivation as long as five years; the California desert snail, Helix veatchii, has become active after a six year aestivation period.

In the deserts of the world there are many plant-eating animals that lie dormant in times of drought, when vegetation is more scarce than during those periods when there is rainfall. There are many desert plants that also lie dormant during periods of drought. Both plants and animals fast during this period of dormancy.

In Australia the nymphs of a species of dragonflies aestivate in dry land. Slugs bury themselves in the ground and bivalve mollusks in the mud. Small crustaceans, mollusks, etc., that are found in the pools and patches of water that frequently form in the deserts, bury themselves deeply in the clay or baked mud, when these pools dry up and estivate for long periods.

While it seems that heat, dryness, and lack of food are the factors that induce aestivation, as cold and famine seem to induce hibernation, there is reason to believe that there is more to the practice than the mere existence of certain external factors. For example, the persistence of the aestivating habit is illustrated by the tenree, which in temperate zoological gardens, where food and water are abundant, aestivates at the time of their scarcity in its native Madagascar. This would seem to indicate that something other than scarcity of food and temperature is at work in aestivation, and, perhaps, also in hibernation.

A peculiar example of an animal that behaves opposite to aestivation is the Egyptian jerboa. It is said to be so closely adapted to dry conditions (of the desert) that rain or damp atmosphere induce it to pass into a dormant condition, in which state it does not eat.

HOW LONG CAN ANIMALS ABSTAIN FROM FOOD?

The most remarkable records of continued abstinence from food are to be found among the lower animals. Compared to some of these, man is a piker. It is often said that the marvels of long-continued abstinence from food reach their maximum in the "winter sleep" of several species of warm-blooded animals, but there are actually longer records than these present.

The recently produced American People's Encyclopedia tells us that the survival time in acute starvation (complete abstinence from all food save water) ranges from 21 to 117 days in dogs; rat 5 to 6 days; guinea pig 7 to 8 days; rabbit 15 days; cat 20 days; dog 38 days. There is some confusion about how long the dog may survive deprivation of food, although the matter of size may determine.

Reports of spiders undergoing incredibly long fasts, spinning webs daily, these made of substances within their bodies, until the weight of the webs so produced far outweigh the weights of the spiders at the beginning of the fast, cause me to suspect that the spiders had sources of food supply of which the observers were unaware. I find it difficult to believe that spiders have mastered the art of making something out of nothing.

Even one-celled organisms (amoeba, paramecia, etc.) can exist without food for from four to twenty-one days. Like muscle cells in a fasting man, fasting one-celled organisms only undergo a diminution in the size of the cell. These die only after the cellular reserve is exhausted. These little beings possess a food reserve which they can live on in emergencies. In the same way, each cell in the bodies of the higher animals possesses its own private food reserve.

Among vertebrates the time they can subsist without food ranges from a few days in small birds and mammals to possibly years in some reptiles. The time they can go without food depends on the amount of reserve possessed and the rate at which it is consumed. In coldblooded animals, the reserves are usually plentiful and the demand made upon them is small, so that they may fast for long intervals, without being forced to renew their stores. In warm-blooded animals, whose reserves are frequently lower and whose great activities make a greater demand upon these, the reserves are more rapidly depleted.

Among cold-blooded animals the survival time without food is usually much greater than among warm-blooded animals, since the former do not have to "burn fuel" in order to maintain a high body temperature. Snakes and other reptiles easily go for long periods without food. Snakes have been kept alive without food for almost two years. A python in captivity has been observed to go without food for a period of thirteen months. Frogs have survived sixteen months and fishes twenty months without food. Invertebrates can stand even longer periods of deprivation; the larva of the beetle Trogderma tarsale living for five years, during which time they lost 99.8 percent of their body substance. Spiders have been observed to exist without food for seventeen months and more. Fabre tells us of certain spiders that they eat no food of any kind for the first sixteen months of their lives but feast upon sunbeams. Gold fishes have been known to go for long periods without food, while proteus angeainus, an amphibian, has been known to live for years without food. In his Researches sur L'lnanition, Chossat tells us that the land tortoise of southern France, can "starve" for a year without betraying a reduction of vital energy, and that Proteus anguinus, the serpent salamander, even for a year and a half, providing the temperature of its cage is kept above the freezing point. Rhine salmon have been known to go without food for eight to fifteen months.

Oswald says: "Reptiles, with their small expenditure of vital energy, can easily survive dietetic deprivations; but bears and badgers, with an organization essentially analogous to that of the human species, and with a circulation of blood active enough to maintain the temperature of their bodies more than a hundred degrees above that of the winter storms, dispense with food for periods varying from three to five months, and at the termination of their ordeal emerge from their dens in the full possession of their physical and mental energies." — Fasting Hydropathy and Exercise, pp. 60-61. The condor, like all other vultures, is able to fast for days. It usually gorges itself, however, when it does get food.

Edwin E. Slossom, M.S., Ph. D., Director of Science Service, Washington, says in his Keeping Up With Science (Page 261): "Among the lower animals existence under inanition may extend over incredibly protracted periods. Scorpions are known to have starved for 368 days, and spiders have survived starvation for seventeen months. The larvae of small beetles have been known to live through more than five years without food, their body mass being reduced in this time to only one-sixth-hundred of what it was at the start. There is a unique record of a fresh water fish, Amia Calva, which fasted twenty months and even then had not apparently reached the end of the rope but was killed. Frogs survive starvation for sixteen months, and snakes remain alive even after two years of fasting. The longest recorded fast endured by a dog was 117 days, or nearly four months."

A. S. Pearse, Professor of Zoology at Duke University, tells us that "certain ticks can exist in an active state for as long as four years without eating anything."

Perhaps the longest periods of abstinence are seen in aestivating animals of the deserts. It should not be overlooked, also, that snails and other animals of northern deserts, that activate in the dry season and hibernate through the winter, spend most of their lives fasting.

FASTING AS A MEANS OF SURVIVAL

After this survey of the many and varied conditions under which animals fast, and the different uses to which fasting is put, it becomes obvious that fasting is one of the most common phenomena in nature. It is second only to feeding and reproduction, with both of which phenomena it is allied, in importance and in breadth of application.

Fasting under so many different conditions is so common in nature and is employed as a means of meeting so many of the exigencies of life that I am forced to wonder why anyone is afraid to fast and why anyone should doubt its naturalness and helpfulness. It is one of nature's best established methods of dealing with certain physiological problems. The hibernating bear, the aestivating alligator, the sick elephant, the wounded dog — these all fast to meet the problems before them. Fasting in acute disease, when there is no digestive power, can be viewed only as a very useful means of adaptation.

As I have previously pointed out, biologically, hibernation is a means of adaptation to the conditions of winter which enables the animal to survive. The ability to go without food during this period is an important element in survival. Except for its ability to fast for extended periods, the hibernating animal would starve to death during the winter.

Our so-called scientists, sticklers as they are for classifications and minute differentiations, are still in the habit of referring to all abstinence from food as starvation. But they say of hibernation that it is a form of "starvation" that "spells survival instead of death." Strangely enough, these men refer to the abstinence of hibernation and that seen in the mating season in some animals as "physiological starvation." This is a misuse of terms. Starvation is at all times pathological, or, pathogenic.

The ability of an animal to fast, even for long periods, under many and varied conditions and circumstances of life, is a vitally important factor in survival. It is nature's best established method of dealing with certain physiological and biological problems. It may be properly regarded as a means of adjustment or adaptation — the hibernating bear, the activating alligator, the sick elephant all fasting to meet the problems before them.

If an animal can fast, it is only because it can rely upon adequate internal resources and it can afford to fast precisely in so far and so long as it duly conserves these provisions. This is the reason hibernating and activating animals function on the lowest physiological level compatible with continued life. With no physical activity and only a bare minimum of physiological activity, their internal reserves are conserved and made to last for prolonged periods — months or a year.

Salmon and the fur-seal bull do not rest and they make no effort to conserve their resources. It would be interesting to know how long these animals could fast if they ceased their activity — physical and sexual.

Fasting during the mating season probably serves some very useful purpose. We know at least, that in the case of certain very low forms of life, it restores the male after several generations of parthenogenetic reproduction. For best results, animals that fast during the mating season seem to require a reduction of surfeit. They purchase rejuvenescence by curbing their anti-symbiotic propensities and abandoning conditions of surfeit. Instability resulting from surfeit and illegitimate food can be gotten rid of and stability regained only by a return to moderation and appropriate food. For immediate results abstinence from food is essential.

Reinheimer thinks that fasting has the effect of assisting towards a re-establishment of a tolerable degree of domestic symbiosis — both for ordinary physiological, as well as for genetic purposes — in those cases where domestic symbiosis is in danger of becoming perverted by the particular organism's transgressions against the laws of biological symbiosis.

I have made no effort to exhaust the list of animals and plants that fast under conditions other than those of sickness or absence of food. The examples that have been given are sufficient to show that nature has no fear of prolonged abstinence from food and that abstinence is frequently made use of in nature, by animals in both the active and the dormant states, as a means of adapting the animal to various conditions of life, or as a means of internal alteration when this is needed. Under all conditions in which animals fast, the internal resources of the animal are drawn upon to nourish the vital tissues and carry on the indispensable functions of life.

In sickness, or when severely wounded, when no food can be digested, the organism also draws upon its internal store of supplies for these same purposes. Fever, pain, distress, inflammation suspend the secretion of the digestive juices, inhibit the muscular actions of the stomach and take away the desire for food. In such conditions there is but one source from which food can be drawn — the reserves.

In sickness, as in animals fasting through the mating period, there is much activity going on in the body. There is, therefore, much more rapid wasting of the body in these two conditions than is seen in hibernation and aestivation.

Viewing the wasted condition of animals at the end of their various fasting periods, it becomes very obvious that, while different species of animals vary in the amount of loss they can safely sustain, none of them are injured or endangered until after a large percentage of the normal weight of the body has been lost. There is, therefore, no danger in a fast of such lengths as are employed in sickness.

Fasting In Man

CHAPTER III

Man is an animal and, as such, is subject to the same laws of existence and the same conditions of living, as are other animals. As a part of the great organic world, he is not a being that is set apart from the ordinary and regular conditions of life, governed by different laws and requirements of existence. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find man not only able to fast for prolonged periods and able to do so with benefit, but also find him fasting under a wide variety of circumstances and for a wide variety of purposes. In the following pages, we shall briefly review the most important of the conditions under which man fasts and the purposes for which he fasts.

RELIGIOUS FASTING

Fasting as a religious observance, has long been practiced for the accomplishment of certain goods. Religious fasting is of early origin, antedating recorded history. Partial or entire abstinence from food, or from certain kinds of foods, at stated seasons, prevailed in Assyria, Persia, Babylon, Scythia, Greece, Rome, India, Ninevah, Palestine, China, in northern Europe among the Druids, and in America among the Indians. It was a widely diffused practice, often indulged as a means of penitence, in mourning and as a preparation for participation in religious rites, such as baptism and communion.

At the very dawn of civilization the Ancient Mysteries, a secret worship or wisdom religion that flourished for thousands of years in Egypt, India, Greece, Persia, Thrace, Scandinavia and the Gothic and Celtic nations, prescribed and practised fasting. The Druidical religion among the Celtic peoples required a long probationary period of fasting and prayer before the candidate could advance. A fast of fifty days was required in the Mithriac religion in Persia. Indeed, fasting was common to all the mysteries, which were all quite similar to the Egyptian mysteries and were probably derived from these. Moses, who was learned in "all the wisdom of Egypt," is said to have fasted for more than 120 days on Mount Sinai.

The mysteries of Tyre, which were represented in Judea in the days of Jesus, in a secret society known as the Essenes, also prescribed fasting. In the first century A.D., there existed in Alexandria, Egypt, an ascetic sect of Jews, called Therapeutae, who resembled the Essenes and who borrowed much from the Kabala and from the Pythagorian and Orphic systems. These Therapeutae gave great attention to the sick and held fasting in high esteem as a curative measure.

Fasting is mentioned quite frequently in the Bible while several fasts of considerable duration are recorded therein, as, Moses forty days (Ex. 24:18; Exodus 34:28); Elijah forty days (1st Kings, 19:8); David seven days (2 Sam. 12:20); Jesus forty days (Matthew 4:2); Luke, "I fast twice in the week" (Luke 18:12); "This kind cometh not out save by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:21); a fast throughout all Judea (2 Chronicles 20:8). The Bible cautions against fasting for mere notoriety (Matt. 6:17, 18). It also advises fasters not to wear a sad countenance (Matt. 6:16); but to find pleasure in fasting and to perform one's work (Isa. 58:3), and that certain fasts shall be fasts of gladness (Zech. 8.19).

We may very properly assume that some great good was the object of the many fasts mentioned in the Bible even though we may be sure that they were not always intended for the "cure" of "disease." We may also be sure that the ancients had no fear of starving to death by missing a few meals.

For two thousand years the Christian religion has recommended "prayer and fasting" and the story of the forty days' fast in the wilderness has been told from thousands of pulpits. Religious fasts were frequently practised in the early days of Christianity and during the Middle Ages. Thomas Campanella tells us that frail nuns often sought relief from attacks of hysteria by fasting "seven times seventy hours," — or twenty and one half days. John Calvin and John Wesley both strongly urged fasting as a beneficial measure for both ministers and people.

Among the early Christians, fasting was among the rites of purification. Fasting is yet a regular practice among the nations of the Far East, especially among the East Indians. The many fasts of Ghandi are generally known.

Penance-worn members of the early church frequently retired to the desert for a month or two to fight down temptations. They would drink water from some dilapidated old cistern during the period, but to eat so much as a millet-seed was considered a breach of their vows and destroyed the merits of their penance. At the end of the second month the "gaunt world-renouncers" generally had sufficient strength to return home unassisted.

The writer of Peregrinato Silviæ, in describing how Lent was observed in Jerusalem, when she was there about 386 A.D., says: "They abstained entirely from all food during Lent, except on Saturdays and Sundays. They took a meal about midday on Sunday, and after that they took nothing until Saturday morning. This was their rule through Lent."

Although the Catholic Church has no law requiring fasting, as we use the term, it was voluntarily practiced by many individuals in the past. Fasting, whether total abstinence from food or abstinence from proscribed foods, is regarded by this Church as a penance. The Catholic Church also teaches that Jesus fasted in order to instruct and encourage belief in the practice of penance.

The Roman Church has both "fast-days" and "abstinence-days," though they are not necessarily the same. The "law of abstinence" is on a different basis and "is regulated, not by the quantity, but by the quality of food" permitted. "The law of abstinence forbids the use of meat or meat broth, but not eggs, 'lacticinia' (milk) or condiments of any kind even from 'the fat of animals'." The rule of the church in fasting is: "What constitutes fasting is the taking of only one full meal in a day." "In earlier times a strict fast was kept until sunset. Now this full meal may be taken any time after mid-day, or, as the church's approved authors hold, shortly before. Some even hold that the full meal may be taken at any time during the 24 hours." But this "one full meal in twenty-four hours" does not prohibit the taking of some food in the morning and evening. Indeed, "local custom," which is often a somewhat undefined phrase, as determined by the local bishop, determines what extra food may be taken daily. In America the rule is that the morning meal should not exceed two ounces of bread; in Westminster (England) the limit is three ounces. Obviously a "fast" of this nature is not what we mean by fasting, for a man may eat enough in this manner to grow fat. Nor can Hygienists accept the so-called moral principle of the Roman Church — "parvum pro nihilo reputatur" and "ne potus noceat" — "a little is reckoned as nothing," "lest drink unaccompanied by anything solid should be harmful." We hold, as Page expressed it, that little driblet meals are not fasting.

The Lenten fast of Catholics is also merely a period of abstinence from certain proscribed foods, although there are Catholics who take advantage of the period for a real fast. The early practice of fasting until sundown, then feasting, is similar to the practice of Mohammedans in their so-called fast of Ramadan. During this season the people do not eat and cannot drink wine nor smoke cigarettes from sunrise to sunset, but they have their cigarettes handy, ready to begin smoking as soon as the sun goes down and they enjoy a night of feasting. A grand carouse at night makes up for their abstinence during the day. Their cities hold nightly carnivals, the restaurants are lighted and the streets are filled with revelers, the bazaars are well illuminated and the peddlers of lemonade and sweetmeats are in their glory. The wealthy sit up all night receiving and returning calls and giving dinner parties. After forty days of this feasting and revelling, the people celebrate the end of their month of "fasting" with the feasting of Bairam.

At the present time Christians of all sects and denominations rarely undergo real fasts. Most fasts of Roman, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant communicants are merely periods of abstinence from flesh foods. Abstinence from flesh foods other than fish on "fast" days appears to have been enjoined merely to aid the fishing and shipbuilding industries. Among the Jews fasting always means entire abstinence from food, and at least one of their fast days carries with it abstinence from water, also. Their periods of fasting are commonly only short ones.

While the Hindu Nationalist's leader, Ghandi, fully understood the hygienic value of the fast, and often fasted for hygienic purposes, most of his fasts were "purification" or penance fasts and political weapons by which he compelled England to accede to his demands. He even fasted for the purification of India, and not merely for his own cleansing.

Fasting formed part of the religious observances of the Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru and of other American tribes. Fasting was also practiced by the Pacific Islanders; while there are traces of fasting in China and Japan, even before their contact with Buddhism. In Eastern Asia and wherever Brahmanism and Buddhism have spread, fasting has been kept alive.

FASTING AS MAGIC

With fasting as magic we have nothing to do, except to study the phenomenon. Tribal fasts, as seen among the American Indians, to avert some threatened calamity, or fasting, as by Ghandi to purify India, is the use of fasting as magic. Fasting was widely observed, both in private and in public ceremonials by the American Indians. Fathers of newborn children are required to fast among the Melanesians. Fasting was often part of the rite of initiation into manhood and womanhood or for sacred and ritual acts among many tribes of people. David's twelve days' fast, as recorded in the Bible, while his son was ill, was a magic fast. Ceremonial fasting carried out in several religions may properly be classed as magic fasting. If we carefully distinguish between magic fasting and protest fasting, as in hunger strikes, we may say that magic fasting is fasting undergone to achieve some desired end outside the person of the faster. We are interested in such fasts, simply as another part of the evidence that man, like the lower animals, may fast for extended periods and may do so, not only without harm, but with positive benefit.

DISCIPLINARY FASTS

Major W. C. Gotschall, M. S., says: "There is nothing new about fasting. Among the ancients it was recognized as a sovereign method of attaining and maintaining marked mental and physical efficiency. Socrates and Plato, two of the greatest of the Greek philosophers a