I can speak _feelingly_ of nearly every stage except the
last. For the first two days through which a strong and healthy
man is doomed to exist upon nothing, his sufferings are, perhaps,
more acute than in the remaining stages; he feels an inordinate,
unappeasable craving at the stomach, night and day. The mind runs
upon beef, bread, and other substantials; but still, in a great
measure, the body retains its strength. On the third and fourth
days, but especially on the fourth, this incessant craving gives
place to a sinking and weakness of the stomach, accompanied by
nausea. The unfortunate sufferer still desires food, but with loss
of strength he loses that eager craving which is felt in the
earlier stages. Should he chance to obtain a morsel or two of
food, as was occasionally the case with us, he swallows it with a
wolfish avidity; but five minutes afterward his sufferings are
more intense than ever. He feels as if he had swallowed a living
lobster, which is clawing and feeding upon the very foundation of
his existence. On the fifth day his cheeks suddenly appear hollow
and sunken, his body attenuated, his color an ashy pale, and his
eye wild, glassy, cannibalish. The different parts of the system
now war with each other. The stomach calls upon the legs to go
with it in quest of food: the legs, from very weakness, refuse.
The sixth day brings with it increased suffering, although the
pangs of hunger are lost in an overpowering languor and sickness.
The head becomes giddy; the ghosts of well-remembered dinners pass
in hideous procession through the mind. The seventh day comes,
bringing increased lassitude and farther prostration of strength.
The arms hang listlessly, the legs drag heavily. The desire for
food is still left, to a degree, but it must be brought, not
sought. The miserable remnant of life which still hangs to the
sufferer is a burden almost too grievous to be borne; yet his
inherent love of existence induces a desire still to preserve it,
if it can be saved without a tax upon bodily exertion. The mind
wanders. At one moment he thinks his weary limbs cannot sustain
him a mile--the next, he is endowed with unnatural strength, and
if there he a certainty of relief before him, dashes bravely and
strongly onward, wondering whence proceeds this new and sudden
impulse.