ver, to go through the ordeal in
the interests of science.

Again I had trouble with him on the water question, wishing him to drink
only as thirst incited. He was differently advised by an eminent Boston
physician, who, taking a great interest in the case, wrote him that he
should have great care to drink certain definite amounts for the
necessary fluidity of the blood. I had to respond that thirst would duly
indicate this need; that in my cases of protracted fasts from acute
sicknesses not one had been advised to take even a teaspoonful of water
for such reasons; that at the closing days before recovery of such cases
there was only the least desire for water, and this with no indication
of need from the blood. Mr. Rathbun did not escape some trouble from
overworked kidneys, and he became convinced that my theory and practice
were more in line with physiology.

This fast was made a matter of daily record by the leading New York
journals, and he became such a subject of general interest that in
addition to his ordinary business he was greatly overtaxed, and was
compelled to give up the fast on the thirty-fifth day, in part from the
exhaustion of over-excitement.

This case was summed up as follows by the _New York Press_, February 27,
1900:

"Milton Rathbun has ended his long fast.

"After thirty-five days, in which solid food or any liquid other
than water was a stranger to his palate, he became extremely
hungry on Sunday night. At first he resisted the longing to eat
and tried to sleep it off. But he awoke in a few hours hungrier
than ever, and then he decided he had fasted as long as was good
for him.

"He ate a modest, light meal and went back to bed, only to awake
still hungry. Then he ate an orange, and was asleep again in a
jiffy. A bowl of milk and cream and crackers sufficed for his
breakfast, and at noon yesterday he enjoyed his first hearty
meal.

"As he walked around the parlor of his home in Mount Vernon,
lighter by forty-three pounds than he was on January 21, this
man of fifty-five years and iron will said:

"'I feel like a boy again. I think I could vault over a six-foot
fence.'

"Mrs. Rathbun herself knows what it is to fast. For five years
such a thing as breakfast has been an unknown quantity in her
house, save when guests were present or for the servants. To
this abstinence Mrs. Rathbun attributes the cur