Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/227

Rh before death takes place; in fact, death by starvation is really death by cold. As soon as the fat of the body goes—and fat is the principle that keeps up the heat—death takes place; the temperature of the body diminishes but little until the fat is consumed, then it rapidly falls.

Chossat—whose experiments on dumb animals are most painful to read—is of opinion that death from exposure to intense cold and death from starvation are one and the same, as, in the torpor of death from want of food, the application of warmth to the body immediately restored consciousness, showing that heat is closely related to the principle of life, as manifested through the nervous system in its more subtile sense.

The symptoms of starvation from want of food are—severe pain at the pit of the stomach, which is relieved on pressure; this subsides after a day or two, but is succeeded by a feeling of weakness and "sinking" in the same region; then an insatiable thirst supervenes, which, if water be withheld, thenceforth becomes the most distressing symptom. The countenance becomes pale and cadaverous, the eyes acquire a peculiarly wild and glistening stare, and general emaciation soon manifests itself. The body then exhales a peculiar fœtor, and the skin is covered with a brownish, dirty-looking, and offensive secretion. The bodily strength rapidly declines; the sufferer totters in walking, his voice becomes weak, and he is incapable of the least exertion. The mental powers exhibit a similar prostration: at first, there is usually a state of stupidity, which gradually increases to imbecility, so that it is difficult to induce the sufferer to make any effort for his own benefit, and on this a state of maniacal delirium frequently supervenes.

Before death takes place the body appears to be undergoing putrefaction, so that, though it seems to waste in one way, the power of the system to eliminate the effete products is paralyzed, and these, instead of being burned off, as they are when the proper nourishment of the tissues is going on, remain and decompose; in no other way can the fœtor during life be accounted for, and the rapid decomposition after death. This accounts also for the fact that cholera, fever, and blood-poisoning are so much more fatal in the badly-fed than they are in the well-to-do; the low state of the vitality induced prevents the elimination of the poison, and the sufferer dies, not by the virulence of the disease, but by his inability, through weakness, to throw it off. Pestilential diseases always follow in the wake of famine, and destroy more than perish from actual starvation.

To show how long life may be carried on with a very little food, the following case may be interesting: In February, 1862, a man thirty-six years of age was discovered in a stack near Morpeth dying from starvation. All attempts to rally him failed, and he ultimately died. He was an intelligent man, and had been editor and proprietor