Fasting Girls: Their Physiology and Pathology

In Short

This book is a clinical examination of the long-standing phenomenon of "fasting girls," women who allegedly survive for years without eating. Through a survey of historical accounts—ranging from medieval saints to nineteenth-century cases—it dissects these claims as a combination of hysteria, deception, and public gullibility. By contrasting these "miracles" with the known physiological realities of starvation, the work seeks to strip away the romanticized veneer of the fasting sufferer, exposing the complex interplay between psychological distress and the human propensity for performance and belief.

The Story

The narrative begins by addressing a fundamental human vulnerability: the willingness to believe in the impossible. The author, a physician, notes with frustration how often the public accepts claims of miraculous survival without food, despite the absolute requirement of nourishment for human life. He reaches back to the medieval era, citing stories of nuns and saints who supposedly lived for years on nothing but the Eucharist. He observes that while these cases were often framed as divine miracles, they were frequently accompanied by "hysterical" symptoms—a catch-all term for the period’s understanding of complex, often somatic, psychological distress.

As the text moves toward the modern era, the focus shifts from the religious to the pathological. The author details the case of Ann Moore, a nineteenth-century woman who claimed to abstain from food for years, only to be unmasked after rigorous observation. This sets the stage for the book’s central drama: the case of Sarah Jacob, a young Welsh girl whose parents asserted she had not eaten for two years. A public committee intervened, placing the child under the watchful eye of nurses. The tragic, inevitable conclusion is that when food was truly withheld, the girl died. The parents were subsequently tried and convicted of fraud, their "miracle" revealed as a deadly deception rooted in their own enabling of the child’s hysteria.

The author then turns his attention to a contemporaneous case in Brooklyn involving a woman named Mollie Fancher. Her physicians and family insisted she had lived for years without food, surrounding her life with rumors of clairvoyance and second sight. The author, skeptical of these extraordinary claims, attempts to bring scientific rigor to the situation by proposing a controlled observation, which is ultimately rejected by her supporters. He treats this as another instance of the "love for the marvellous" overriding empirical evidence.

The work concludes by pivoting to the cold, biological facts of inanition (the process of starving). He provides a physiological breakdown of what happens to the human body when nourishment is truly absent: the drop in body temperature, the cessation of secretions, and the eventual mental decline into delirium. He draws a firm line between this biological reality and the "hysterical" patient, who may indeed endure longer than a healthy person due to a reduced state of metabolic activity, but who nonetheless cannot bypass the laws of nature. He argues that what looks like a miracle is, at its core, a psychological condition—one where the patient often misleads their caregivers, and where the caregivers, in turn, facilitate a dangerous fantasy.

How It Unfolds

The survey of superstition The narrative opens by cataloging centuries of reports where saints and the "possessed" alike are credited with supernatural abstinence. These accounts serve as a foundation for showing how historical, religious, and even diabolical interpretations have historically masked simple medical observation.

The tragedy of the fraud The book transitions to the specific, fatal case of Sarah Jacob to illustrate the consequences of unchecked belief. By detailing the court proceedings against her parents, the author highlights how the desire for fame or religious validation can push a family to ignore the physical survival of their child.

The contemporary debate The text then confronts the ongoing mystery of the Brooklyn case, pitting medical skepticism against local testimony. This section serves as a direct, present-tense confrontation with a society still deeply divided between the allure of the supernatural and the skepticism of the laboratory.

The final synthesis The book ends by laying out the physical, observable stages of starvation. By focusing on the scientific reality of metabolism, the author effectively closes the door on the possibility of "fasting" as a sustainable state, leaving the reader with a clinical understanding of human limitation.

The People

• Sarah Jacob: A young girl who becomes the subject of a fatal, high-stakes medical experiment. She is presented as a victim of both her own hysterical propensity for deception and her parents' misguided, arguably criminal, management of her care.
• Mollie Fancher: A Brooklyn invalid whose claim of living without food for fourteen years polarizes the medical community. She remains an enigma throughout the book, representing the modern, urban version of the fasting phenomenon, shielded from scrutiny by her family and sympathetic physicians.
• The Parents of Sarah Jacob: Described as the primary enablers of a deadly lie. Their conviction for fraud underscores the author’s argument that "fasting" is rarely a solitary act; it requires a community of believers to maintain the performance.
• The Physicians (Dr. Ormiston and Dr. Speir): These figures represent the conflict between professional medical observation and the pressure to validate a patient’s extraordinary claims. They serve as the reader’s bridge into the complex, often contradictory, world of Victorian medical diagnosis.

In Its Own Voice

"It seems that no proposition that can be made is so absurd or impossible but that many people, ordinarily regarded as intelligent, will be found to accept it and to aid in its propagation."

This appears in the preface, setting the author’s tone of skepticism toward the public’s eagerness to believe in miracles.

"To the absurdity of believing in the barest possibility of twenty-six months absolute abstinence, it is sufficient to reply that when to our knowledge, she was completely deprived of food, the girl died!"

The author uses this blunt, definitive statement to summarize the tragic outcome of the Sarah Jacob case.

"A tendency to deception is a notable phenomenon of hysteria, and if she has led those about her to accept the view that she has existed without food for years, the circumstance would be in no way remarkable."

This passage reflects the author’s clinical perspective on the psychological motivations behind the fasting claims.

What It's Really About

The book explores the tension between scientific inquiry and the persistent human hunger for the supernatural. It argues that the "fasting girl" phenomenon is not a biological event but a psychological one, rooted in the multifaceted nature of hysteria. The central question is how an entire community can be persuaded to ignore the fundamental requirements of human life in favor of a "marvellous" narrative. It is a study in how deception is constructed, maintained, and ultimately justified by the interplay between a patient’s internal state and the external expectations of a credulous public.

Why Read It Today

Readers interested in the history of medicine or the sociology of belief will find this a fascinating, if sometimes grim, document. It captures the specific, mid-to-late nineteenth-century struggle to classify mental and somatic symptoms through an emerging, strictly empirical lens. The book provides a candid look at the period's "hysteria" diagnosis, which, while dated in its terminology, captures a recognizable human phenomenon: the complex ways in which individuals manifest psychic pain through the body.

The writing is direct and sharp, though modern readers should be prepared for the author’s occasional condescension toward his peers and the public—a common rhetorical style of the era. You will encounter nineteenth-century medical jargon and a worldview that is deeply entrenched in the Victorian understanding of psychology. However, the core of the book—the battle between evidence and anecdote—remains strikingly contemporary. It is a compelling reminder of how easily we can be misled by our own desire for the extraordinary, and how crucial it remains to apply "right standards" of logic to the stories we tell ourselves about the human body. The book is an essential artifact for anyone curious about the intersection of medical ethics, public performance, and the history of psychological suffering.