Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/66

60 a mistake to suppose that staying powers of that kind are a prerogative of the sick. Miners in collieries, affording a sufficient supply of water, have been found alive after weeks of enforced abstinence from any more nutritious food than scraps of leather soaked in pit-water and masticated with desperate perseverance. Sailors, deprived of food and drink, have endured exposure to the glare of a tropical sun for a week or more. But the marvels of long-continued abstinence without loss of strength reach their maximum in the winter-sleep of several species of warm-blooded animals. Reptiles, with their small expenditure of vital energy, can easily survive dietetic deprivations, but bears and badgers, with an organization essentially analogous to that of the human species, and with a circulation of the blood active enough to maintain the temperature of their bodies more than a hundred degrees above that of the winter-storms, dispense with food for periods varying from three to five months, and at the termination of their ordeal emerge from their dens in the full possession of their physical and mental energies.

The black bear of northern Russia rolls