Starvation suggests inquiries respecting ab stinence in diet and from various or particular kinds of food. A sudden and unfavorable change in a given dietary may induce, in virtue of the new food containing a low percentage of certain nutritive matters, symptoms analogous to those of starvation. Want of nutriment produces an incapacity for the digestion of whatever amount is supplied, a result probably due to nervous causes and primarily perhaps to the want of stimulation of the appetite through insufficient secretion of gastric juice.
Where the temperature of the body is main tained in tolerable efficiency, life may be pro longed for great periods without food, a state of syncope prevailing—as in several noted cases of so-called apparent death. It was found by Chossat that in the case of animals whose death seemed imminent from starvation, restoration took place primarily by the applica tion of artificial heat. They thus manifested activity, and were able afterward to partake of food. From 8 to 10 days is regarded as the usual period during which human life can be supported without food or drink. If water be given this period may be greatly exceeded.
and where a moist condition of the atmos phere exists life may for the same reason he prolonged. A case is recorded in which some workmen were dug out alive after 14 days' 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 23 days, during the first 10 of which he subsisted on a little dirty water. He died, however, three days after his release. Life has been prolonged for 60 days in a person suffering from religious mania who abstained from food, supporting his existence by sucking an orange. In some remarkable cases of nervous hysteria and other diseased conditions no food may be taken and yet the body be perfectly sus tained. The system is disposed or becomes inured to the abstinence, just as under other conditions it exhibits a want of susceptibility to the ordinary effects of certain me•Ticines. (See FASTING). Consult Benedict, F. G., 'A Study of Prolonged Fasting' (Washington 1915) ; Davies, 'Starvation' (in Popular Sci ence Monthly 1884-85, Vol. XXVI) ; Leeson, 'Death from Starvation' (in Dublin Medical Press 1847).