I trust I have now sufficiently prepared the mind of the reader for an examination of the phenomena of the voluntary suspension of life that I shall now treat of.
The body of an animal may be compared to a machine that converts the food that it receives into motion. It receives nothing, it will produce nothing; but there is no reason why it should get out of order if it is not deteriorated by external agents. The legendary rustic who wanted to accustom his ass to go without food was therefore theoretically wrong only because he at the same time wanted the animal to work. The whole difficulty consists in breaking with old habits. To return to the comparison that we just made, we shall run the risk of exploding the boiler of a steam engine if we heat it or cool it abruptly, but we can run it very slowly and for a very long time with but very little fuel. We may even preserve a little fire under the ashes, and this, although it may not be capable of setting the parts running, will suffice later on to revivify the fireplace after it has been charged anew with fuel.
We have recently had the example of Dr. Tanner, who went forty days without any other nourishment than water. Not very long ago Liedovine de Schiedam, who had been bedridden for twenty years, affirmed that she had taken no food for eight of them. It is said that Saint Catharine of Sienna gradually accustomed herself to do without food, and that she lived twenty years in total abstinence. We know of several examples of prolonged sleep during which the sleeper naturally took no nourishment. In his Magic Disquisitions, Delvis cites the case of a countryman who slept for an entire autumn and winter. Pfendler relates that a certain young and hysterical woman fell twice into a deep slumber which each time lasted six months. In 1883 an _enceinte_ woman was found asleep on a bench in the Grand Armee Avenue. She was taken to the Beaujon Hospital, where she was delivered a few days after while still asleep, and it was not till the end of three months that she could be awakened from her lethargy. At this very moment, at Tremeille, a woman named Marguerite Bouyenvalle is sleeping a sleep that has lasted nearly a year, during which the only food that she has had is a few drops of soup daily.