PHYSIOLOGIC AND FUNCTIONAL ANOMALIES. 5 page

days, revealed remarkable intestinal changes. The serous membranes were

all callous and thickened, and the canal of the sigmoid flexure was

totally obliterated. The mucous membranes were all soft and friable,

and presented the appearance of incipient gangrene.

Modern Cases.--Turning now to modern literature, we have cases of

marvelous abstinence well substantiated by authoritative evidence.

Dickson describes a man of sixty-two, suffering from monomania, who

refused food for four months, but made a successful recovery.

Richardson mentions a case, happening in 1848, of a man of thirty-three

who voluntarily fasted for fifty-five days. His reason for fasting,

which it was impossible to combat, was that he had no gastric juice and

that it was utterly useless for him to take any nutrition, as he had no

means of digesting it. He lived on water until the day of his death.

Richardson gives an interesting account of the changes noticed at the

necropsy. There is an account of a religious mendicant of the Jain

caste who as a means of penance fasted for ninety-one days. The

previous year he had fasted eighty-six days. He had spent his life in

strict asceticism, and during his fasting he was always engrossed in

prayer.

Collins describes a maiden lady of eighty, always a moderate eater, who

was attacked by bronchitis, during which she took food as usual. Two

days after her recovery, without any known cause, she refused all food

and continued to do so for thirty-three days, when she died. She was

delirious throughout this fast and slept daily seven or eight hours. As

a rule, she drank about a wineglassful of water each day and her urine

was scanty and almost of the consistency of her feces. There is a

remarkable case of a girl of seventeen who, suffering with typhoid

fever associated with engorgement of the abdomen and suppression of the

functions of assimilation, fasted for four months without visible

diminution in weight. Pierce reports the history of a woman of

twenty-six who fasted for three months and made an excellent recovery.

Grant describes the "Market Harborough fasting-girl," a maiden of

nineteen, who abstained from food from April, 1874, until December,

1877, although continually using morphia. Throughout her fast she had

periodic convulsions, and voided no urine or feces for twelve months

before her death. There was a middle-aged woman in England in 1860 who

for two years lived on opium, gin, and water. Her chief symptoms were

almost daily sickness and epileptic fits three times a week. She was

absolutely constipated, and at her death her abdomen was so distended

as to present the appearance of ascites. After death, the distention of

the abdomen was found to be due to a coating of fat, four inches thick,

in the parietes. There was no obstruction to the intestinal canal and

no fecal or other accumulation within it. Christina Marshall, a girl

of fourteen, went fifteen and one-half months without taking solid

nourishment. She slept very little, seldom spoke, but occasionally

asked the time of day. She took sweets and water, with beef tea at

intervals, and occasionally a small piece of orange. She died April 18,

1882, after having been confined to her bed for a long while.

King, a surgeon, U.S.A., gives an account of the deprivation of a squad

of cavalry numbering 40. While scouting for Indians on the plains they

went for eighty-six hours without water; when relieved their mouths and

throats were so dry that even brown sugar would not dissolve on their

tongues. Many were delirious, and all had drawn fresh blood from their

horses. Despite repeated vomiting, some drank their own urine. They

were nearly all suffering from overpowering dyspnea, two were dead, and

two were missing. The suffering was increased by the acrid atmosphere

of the dry plains; the slightest exercise in this climate provoked a

thirst. MacLoughlin, the surgeon in charge of the S.S. City of Chester,

speaks of a young stowaway found by the stevedores in an insensible

condition after a voyage of eleven days. The man was brought on deck

and revived sufficiently to be sent to St. Vincent's Hospital, N.Y.,

about one and one-half hours after discovery, in an extremely

emaciated, cold, and nearly pulseless condition. He gave his name as

John Donnelly, aged twenty, of Dumbarton, Scotland. On the whole voyage

he had nothing to eat or drink. He had found some salt, of which he ate

two handfuls, and he had in his pocket a small flask, empty. Into this

flask he voided his urine, and afterward drank it. Until the second day

he was intensely hungry, but after that time was consumed by a burning

thirst; he shouted four or five hours every day, hoping that he might

be heard. After this he became insensible and remembered nothing until

he awakened in the hospital where, under careful treatment, he finally

recovered.

Fodere mentions some workmen who were buried alive fourteen days in a

cold, damp cavern under a ruin, and yet all lived. There is a modern

instance of a person being buried thirty-two days beneath snow, without

food. The Lancet notes that a pig fell off Dover Cliff and was picked

up alive one hundred and sixty days after, having been partially

imbedded in debris. It was so surrounded by the chalk of the cliff that

little motion was possible, and warmth was secured by the enclosing

material. This animal had therefore lived on its own fat during the

entire period.

Among the modern exhibitionists may be mentioned Merlatti, the fasting

Italian, and Succi, both of whom fasted in Paris; Alexander Jacques,

who fasted fifty days; and the American, Dr. Tanner, who achieved great

notoriety by a fast of forty days, during which time he exhibited

progressive emaciation. Merlatti, who fasted in Paris in 1886, lost 22

pounds in a month; during his fast of fifty days he drank only pure

filtered water. Prior to the fast his farewell meal consisted of a

whole fat goose, including the bones, two pounds of roast beef,

vegetables for two, and a plate of walnuts, the latter eaten whole.

Alexander Jacques fasted fifty days and Succi fasted forty days.

Jacques lost 28 pounds and 4 ounces (from 142 pounds, 8 ounces to 114

pounds, 4 ounces), while Succi's loss was 34 pounds and 3 ounces.

Succi diminished in height from 65 3/4 to 64 1/2 inches, while Jacques

increased from 64 1/2 to 65 1/2 inches. Jacques smoked cigarettes

incessantly, using 700 in the fifty days, although, by professional

advice, he stopped the habit on the forty-second day. Three or four

times a day he took a powder made of herbs to which he naturally

attributed his power of prolonging life without food. Succi remained in

a room in which he kept the temperature at a very high point. In

speaking of Succi's latest feat a recent report says: "It has come to

light in his latest attempt to go for fifty days without food that he

privately regaled himself on soup, beefsteak, chocolate, and eggs. It

was also discovered that one of the 'committee,' who were supposed to

watch and see that the experiment was conducted in a bona fide manner,

'stood in' with the faster and helped him deceive the others. The

result of the Vienna experiment is bound to cast suspicion on all

previous fasting accomplishments of Signor Succi, if not upon those of

his predecessors."

Although all these modern fasters have been accused of being jugglers

and deceivers, throughout their fasts they showed constant decrease in

weight, and inspection by visitors was welcomed at all times. They

invariably invited medical attention, and some were under the closest

surveillance; although we may not implicitly believe that the fasts

were in every respect bona fide, yet we must acknowledge that these men

displayed great endurance in their apparent indifference for food, the

deprivation of which in a normal individual for one day only causes

intense suffering.

Anomalies of Temperature.--In reviewing the reports of the highest

recorded temperatures of the human body, it must be remembered that no

matter how good the evidence or how authentic the reference there is

always chance for malingering. It is possible to send the index of an

ordinary thermometer up to the top in ten or fifteen seconds by rubbing

it between the slightly moistened thumb and the finger, exerting

considerable pressure at the time. There are several other means of

artificially producing enormous temperatures with little risk of

detection, and as the sensitiveness of the thermometer becomes greater

the easier is the deception.

Mackenzie reports the temperature-range of a woman of forty-two who

suffered with erysipelatous inflammation of a stump of the leg.

Throughout a somewhat protracted illness, lasting from February 20 to

April 22, 1879, the temperature many times registered between 108

degrees and 111 degrees F. About a year later she was again troubled

with the stump, and this time the temperature reached as high as 114

degrees. Although under the circumstances, as any rational physician

would, Mackenzie suspected fraud, he could not detect any method of

deception. Finally the woman confessed that she had produced the

temperature artificially by means of hot-water bottles, poultices, etc.

MacNab records a case of rheumatic fever in which the temperature was

111.4 degrees F. as indicated by two thermometers, one in the axilla

and the other in the groin. This high degree of temperature was

maintained after death. Before the Clinical Society of London, Teale

reported a case in which, at different times, there were recorded

temperatures from 110 degrees to 120 degrees F. in the mouth, rectum,

and axilla. According to a comment in the Lancet, there was no way that

the patient could have artificially produced this temperature, and

during convalescence the thermometer used registered normal as well as

subnormal temperatures. Caesar speaks of a girl of fifteen with enteric

fever, whose temperature, on two occasions 110 degrees F., reached the

limit of the mercury in the thermometer.

There have been instances mentioned in which, in order to escape

duties, prisoners have artificially produced high temperatures, and the

same has occasionally been observed among conscripts in the army or

navy. There is an account of a habit of prisoners of introducing

tobacco into the rectum, thereby reducing the pulse to an alarming

degree and insuring their exemption from labor. In the Adelaide

Hospital in Dublin there was a case in which the temperature in the

vagina and groin registered from 120 degrees to 130 degrees, and one

day it reached 130.8 degrees F.; the patient recovered. Ormerod

mentions a nervous and hysteric woman of thirty-two, a sufferer with

acute rheumatism, whose temperature rose to 115.8 degrees F. She

insisted on leaving the hospital when her temperature was still 104

degrees.

Wunderlich mentions a case of tetanus in which the temperature rose to

46.40 degrees C. (115.5 degrees F.), and before death it was as high as

44.75 degrees C. Obernier mentions 108 degrees F. in typhoid fever.

Kartulus speaks of a child of five, with typhoid fever, who at

different times had temperatures of 107 degrees, 108 degrees, and 108.2

degrees F.; it finally recovered. He also quotes a case of pyemia in a

boy of seven, whose temperature rose to 107.6 degrees F. He also speaks

of Wunderlich's case of remittent fever, in which the temperature

reached 107.8 degrees F. Wilson Fox, in mentioning a case of rheumatic

fever, says the temperature reached 110 degrees F.

Philipson gives an account of a female servant of twenty-three who

suffered from a neurosis which influenced the vasomotor nervous system,

and caused hysteria associated with abnormal temperatures. On the

evening of July 9th her temperature was 112 degrees F.; on the 16th, it

was 111 degrees; on the 18th, 112 degrees; on the 24th, 117 degrees

(axilla); on the 28th, in the left axilla it was 117 degrees, in the

right axilla, 114 degrees, and in the mouth, 112 degrees; on the 29th,

it was 115 degrees in the right axilla, 110 degrees in the left axilla,

and 116 degrees in the mouth The patient was discharged the following

September. Steel of Manchester speaks of a hysteric female of twenty,

whose temperature was 116.4 degrees. Mahomed mentions a hysteric woman

of twenty-two at Guy's Hospital, London, with phthisis of the left

lung, associated with marked hectic fevers. Having registered the limit

of the ordinary thermometers, the physicians procured one with a scale

reaching to 130 degrees F. She objected to using the large

thermometers, saying they were "horse thermometers." On October 15,

1879, however, they succeeded in obtaining a temperature of 128 degrees

F. with the large thermometer. In March of the following year she died,

and the necropsy revealed nothing indicative of a cause for these

enormous temperatures. She was suspected of fraud, and was closely

watched in Guy's Hospital, but never, in the slightest way, was she

detected in using artificial means to elevate the temperature record.

In cases of insolation it is not at all unusual to see a patient whose

temperature cannot be registered by an ordinary thermometer. Any one

who has been resident at a hospital in which heat-cases are received in

the summer will substantiate this. At the Emergency Hospital in

Washington, during recent years, several cases have been brought in

which the temperatures were above the ordinary registering point of the

hospital thermometers, and one of the most extraordinary cases

recovered.

At a meeting of the Association of American Physicians in 1895, Jacobi

of New York reported a case of hyperthermy reaching 148 degrees F. This

instance occurred in a profoundly hysteric fireman, who suffered a

rather severe injury as the result of a fall between the revolving rods

of some machinery, and was rendered unconscious for four days.

Thereafter he complained of various pains, bloody expectoration, and

had convulsions at varying intervals, with loss of consciousness, rapid

respiration, unaccelerated pulse, and excessively high temperature, the

last on one occasion reaching the height of 148 degrees F. The

temperature was taken carefully in the presence of a number of persons,

and all possible precautions were observed to prevent deception. The

thermometer was variously placed in the mouth, anus, axilla, popliteal

space, groin, urethra, and different instruments were from time to time

employed. The behavior of the patient was much influenced by attention

and by suggestion. For a period of five days the temperature averaged

continuously between 120 degrees and 125 degrees F.

In the discussion of the foregoing case, Welch of Baltimore referred to

a case that had been reported in which it was said that the temperature

reached as high as 171 degrees F. These extraordinary elevations of

temperature, he said, appear physically impossible when they are long

continued, as they are fatal to the life of the animal cell.

In the same connection Shattuck of Boston added that he had observed a

temperature of 117 degrees F.; every precaution had been taken to

prevent fraud or deception. The patient was a hysteric young woman.

Jacobi closed the discussion by insisting that his observations had

been made with the greatest care and precautions and under many

different circumstances. He had at first viewed the case with

skepticism, but he could not doubt the results of his observation. He

added, that although we cannot explain anomalies of this kind, this

constitutes no reason why we should deny their occurrence.

Duffy records one of the lowest temperatures on record in a negress of

thirty-five who, after an abortion, showed only 84 degrees F. in the

mouth and axillae. She died the next day.

The amount of external heat that a human being can endure is sometimes

remarkable, and the range of temperature compatible with life is none

the less extraordinary. The Esquimaux and the inhabitants of the

extreme north at times endure a temperature of--60 degrees F., while

some of the people living in equatorial regions are apparently healthy

at a temperature as high as 130 degrees F., and work in the sun, where

the temperature is far higher. In the engine-rooms of some steamers

plying in tropical waters temperatures as high as 150 degrees F. have

been registered, yet the engineers and the stokers become habituated to

this heat and labor in it without apparent suffering. In Turkish baths,

by progressively exposing themselves to graduated temperatures, persons

have been able to endure a heat considerably above the boiling point,

though having to protect their persons from the furniture and floors

and walls of the rooms. The hot air in these rooms is intensely dry,

provoking profuse perspiration. Sir Joseph Banks remained some time in

a room the temperature of which was 211 degrees F., and his own

temperature never mounted above normal.

There have been exhibitionists who claimed particular ability to endure

intense heats without any visible disadvantage. These men are generally

styled "human salamanders," and must not be confounded with the

"fire-eaters," who, as a rule, are simply jugglers. Martinez, the

so-called "French Salamander," was born in Havana. As a baker he had

exposed himself from boyhood to very high temperatures, and he

subsequently gave public exhibitions of his extraordinary ability to

endure heat. He remained in an oven erected in the middle of the

Gardens of Tivoli for fourteen minutes when the temperature in the oven

was 338 degrees F. His pulse on entering was 76 and on coming out 130.

He often duplicated this feat before vast assemblages, though hardly

ever attaining the same degree of temperature, the thermometer

generally varying from 250 degrees F. upward. Chamouni was the

celebrated "Russian Salamander," assuming the title of "The

Incombustible." His great feat was to enter an oven with a raw leg of

mutton, not retiring until the meat was well baked. This person

eventually lost his life in the performance of this feat; his ashes

were conveyed to his native town, where a monument was erected over

them. Since the time of these two contemporaneous salamanders there

have been many others, but probably none have attained the same

notoriety.

In this connection Tillet speaks of some servant girls to a baker who

for fifteen minutes supported a temperature of 270 degrees F.; for ten

minutes, 279 degrees F.; and for several minutes, 364 degrees F., thus

surpassing Martinez. In the Glasgow Medical Journal, 1859, there is an

account of a baker's daughter who remained twelve minutes in an oven at

274 degrees F. Chantrey, the sculptor, and his workman are said to have

entered with impunity a furnace of over 320 degrees F.

In some of the savage ceremonies of fire worship the degree of heat

endured by the participants is really remarkable, and even if the rites

are performed by skilful juggling, nevertheless, the ability to endure

intense heat is worthy of comment. A recent report says:--

"The most remarkable ceremonial of fire worship that survives in this

country is practiced by the Navajos. They believe in purification by

fire, and to this end they literally wash themselves in it. The feats

they perform with it far exceed the most wonderful acts of fire-eating

and fire-handling accomplished by civilized jugglers. In preparation

for the festival a gigantic heap of dry wood is gathered from the

desert. At the appointed moment the great pile of inflammable brush is

lighted and in a few moments the whole of it is ablaze. Storms of

sparks fly 100 feet or more into the air, and ashes fall about like a

shower of snow. The ceremony always takes place at night and the effect

of it is both weird and impressive.

"Just when the fire is raging at its hottest a whistle is heard from

the outer darkness and a dozen warriors, lithe and lean, dressed simply

in narrow white breech-cloths and moccasins and daubed with white earth

so as to look like so many living statues, come bounding through the

entrance to the corral that incloses the flaming heap. Yelping like

wolves, they move slowly toward the fire, bearing aloft slender wands

tipped with balls of eagle-down. Rushing around the fire, always to the

left, they begin thrusting their wands toward the fire, trying to burn

off the down from the tips. Owing to the intensity of the heat this is

difficult to accomplish. One warrior dashes wildly toward the fire and

retreats; another lies as close to the ground as a frightened lizard,

endeavoring to wriggle himself up to the fire; others seek to catch on

their wands the sparks that fly in the air. At last one by one they all

succeed in burning the downy balls from the wands. The test of

endurance is very severe, the heat of the fire being so great.

"The remarkable feats, however, are performed in connection with

another dance that follows. This is heralded by a tremendous blowing of

horns. The noise grows louder and louder until suddenly ten or more men

run into the corral, each of them carrying two thick bundles of

shredded cedar bark.

"Four times they run around the fire waving the bundles, which are then

lighted. Now begins a wild race around the fire, the rapid running

causing the brands to throw out long streamers of flames over the hands

and arms of the dancers. The latter apply the brands to their own nude

bodies and to the bodies of their comrades in front. A warrior will

seize the flaming mass as if it were a sponge, and, keeping close to

the man he is pursuing, will rub his back with it as if bathing him.

The sufferer in turn catches up with the man in front of him and bathes

him in flame. From time to time the dancers sponge their own backs

with the flaming brands. When a brand is so far consumed that it can no

longer be held it is dropped and the dancers disappear from the corral.

The spectators pick up the flaming bunches thus dropped and bathe their

own hands in the fire.

"No satisfactory explanation seems to be obtainable as to the means by

which the dancers in this extraordinary performance are able to escape

injury. Apparently they do not suffer from any burns. Doubtless some

protection is afforded by the earth that is applied to their bodies."

Spontaneous combustion of the human body, although doubted by the

medical men of this day, has for many years been the subject of much

discussion; only a few years ago, among the writers on this subject,

there were as many credulous as there were skeptics. There is,

however, no reliable evidence to support the belief in the spontaneous

combustion of the body. A few apochryphal cases only have been

recorded. The opinion that the tissues of drunkards might be so

saturated with alcohol as to render the body combustible is disproved

by the simple experiment of placing flesh in spirits for a long time

and then trying to burn it. Liebig and others found that flesh soaked

in alcohol would burn only until the alcohol was consumed. That various

substances ignite spontaneously is explained by chemic phenomena, the

conditions of which do not exist in the human frame. Watkins in

speaking of the inflammability of the human body remarks that on one

occasion he tried to consume the body of a pirate given to him by a U.

S. Marshal. He built a rousing fire and piled wood on all night, and

had not got the body consumed by the forenoon of the following day.

Quite a feasible reason for supposed spontaneous human combustion is to

be found in several cases quoted by Taylor, in which persons falling

asleep, possibly near a fire, have been accidentally ignited, and

becoming first stupefied by the smoke, and then suffocated, have been

burned to charcoal without awaking. Drunkenness or great exhaustion may

also explain certain cases. In substantiation of the possibility of

Taylor's instances several prominent physiologists have remarked that

persons have endured severe burns during sleep and have never wakened.

There is an account of a man who lay down on the top of a lime kiln,

which was fired during his sleep, and one leg was burned entirely off

without awaking the man, a fact explained by the very slow and gradual

increase of temperature.

The theories advanced by the advocates of spontaneous human combustion

are very ingenious and deserve mention here. An old authority has said:

"Our blood is of such a nature, as also our lymph and bile: all of

which, when dried by art, flame like spirit of wine at the approach of

the least fire and burn away to ashes." Lord Bacon mentions spontaneous

combustion, and Marcellus Donatus says that in the time of Godefroy of

Bouillon there were people of a certain locality who supposed

themselves to have been burning of an invisible fire in their entrails,

and he adds that some cut off a hand or a foot when the burning began,

that it should go no further. What may have been the malady with which

these people suffered must be a matter of conjecture.

Overton, in a paper on this subject, remarks that in the "Memoirs of

the Royal Society of Paris," 1751, there is related an account of a

butcher who, opening a diseased beef, was burned by a flame which

issued from the maw of the animal; there was first an explosion which

rose to a height of five feet and continued to blaze several minutes

with a highly offensive odor. Morton saw a flame emanate from beneath

the skin of a hog at the instant of making an incision through it.

Ruysch, the famous Dutch physician, remarks that he introduced a hollow

bougie into a woman's stomach he had just opened, and he observed a

vapor issuing from the mouth of the tube, and this lit on contact with

the atmosphere. This is probably an exaggeration of the properties of

the hydrogen sulphid found in the stomach. There is an account of a man

of forty-three, a gross feeder, who was particularly fond of fats and a

victim of psoriasis palmaria, who on going to bed one night, after

extinguishing the light in the room, was surprised to find himself

enveloped in a phosphorescent halo; this continued for several days and

recurred after further indiscretions in diet. It is well known that

there are insects and other creatures of the lower animal kingdom which

possess the peculiar quality of phosphorescence.

There are numerous cases of spontaneous combustion of the human body

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 665