Therapeutic Fasting - The Tanner Story
As late as 1927, a physician told a patient whom I placed upon a fast that if she abstained from eating for six days her heart would collapse and she would die. The old prejudice against fasting still lingers in medical thinking. Although at intervals somebody makes the important discovery that the popularity of fasting has waxed and waned among medical men and that they have, at several different times in the past, made extensive use of it, I have been unable to discover any reference, in medical history, to their extensive use of fasting. Every so often some wiseacre among medical men will assure us that his profession gave it a test and that it was found wanting, but he always fails to give us the documentation of the tests. I think that it is all myth. That a number of individual medical men have employed fasting (and all of them have been enthusiastic about it) is true, but the profession, as a whole, has not employed it.
In 1877 Henry S. Tanner, M.D., a regular physician in good standing, undertook to kill himself by abstaining from food. He had been taught that he could expect death by the end of the tenth day, and he had suffered so much and so long with his ailments that he decided that this would be the best way out. He found himself growing better day by day, as the fast progressed, and, instead of dying on the tenth day, he fasted for forty-two days, to recovery. The story was published and he was denounced by his professional brethren as a fraud. In 1880 he underwent a second fast in New York city under the most rigid test conditions. This fast lasted forty days and while no charge of fraud could now be launched against him, his medical colleagues still refused to believe that a man could live more than ten days without food. Below I am giving Dr. Tanner's own story of his two fasts.
Living at that time in Duluth, Minn., he journeyed to Minneapolis to secure professional aid. Rheumatism of an "aggravated character," followed by "rheumatism of the heart" was the diagnosis of his case by seven reputable physicians and he was regarded by them as hopeless. He also had asthma of a very distressing character, which prevented sleeping in a recumbent position, and his pains were intense. He tells us that "At that time, in common with the profession, I entertained the fallacy that ten days total abstinence from food would prepare one for the undertaker. Life to me under the circumstances was not worth living. Death would have been welcome at that stage of the proceeding. Ten days of fasting was the open door to the desired end. I had found a short cut and had made up my mind to rest from physical suffering in the arms of death.
"I undertook the fast, without any preparation more than what Hope with her benign smile held out to me. To my agreeable surprise I found that every day of my stomach's absolute rest, freedom from pain came as a sequence. The fifth day came and I was so far relieved that I could lie down for a short time and sleep. I continued the fast everyday finding myself relieved to a surprising degree.
"The eleventh day came and found me breathing normally; the equilibrium of the entire organism restored, and I felt as well as in my youthful days. On the night of the eleventh day I retired for an hour's sleep I hoped for, but to my profound surprise, on waking the sun was up and well on toward the zenith. I had slept for hours, the first time in many months. I sought Dr. Moyer, the physician of my desire, and asked him to give my case a critical examination. He did so, and dumbfounded at the result he said: `Why Doctor, your heart is beating perfectly normal, the first time since I have known you. What have you been doing?` `I have simply given by stomach an absolute rest for eleven days, and now it with myself, is living, rejoicing every day.` The good doctor's surprise grew upon him profoundly; mine was an experience without a parallel in medical history. `According to all authority, you ought to be at death's door, but you certainly look better than I ever saw you before.'
"This talk led out to a more general discussion of the phenomena the case presented. He could not believe the evidence of his senses. I continued my fast under his supervision for 31 days, making it 42 in all. From that day to this I have had no return of my heart trouble, asthma or rheumatism. The story of my fast, contrary to my wishes, was accidentally made public by a brother physician and a sensational article of a column and a half was published in the Minneapolis department of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The cry of impossible-fraud, etc., was immediately set up by the people, and the medical profession especially, and the feeling was so intense that from that moment I was publicly ridiculed, denounced a faker, and was the recipient of all the bitter and base denunciations that would bear utterance.
"Proof was demanded. I offered at any time to repeat the fast if the medical society would furnish the watchers, and after many trials for volunteers to take charge of the experiment it was arranged to take place in Clarendon Hall, New York City, under the supervision of the faculty of the United States Medical College of New York. This second fast was commenced on the 28th day of June, 1880, at noon.
"As a result of the general skepticism the watch was made as rigid as satanic ingenuity could make it. Every article of upholstered furniture was removed from the hall, the carpets were removed, a cane seated rocker was brought in for my use. A canvas covered cot was placed directly under a chandelier, so that at night the glare of six gas jets was shining full in my face all night. On the cot there were no sheets, no mattress, no pillow, nothing but a rubber piano spread for covering. A railing was placed around the enclosure, so arranged that no one was allowed within it but the watchers, not one of whom had any faith that I was honest, but would cheat at every turn. Inside of the wooden railing was placed a rope extending the entire distance of the enclosure, beyond that I was not allowed to pass. The distance from the wooden railing to the rope was sufficient to prevent me from reaching out my hand to receive any article of whatsoever character from a person outside the wood-railing and vice versa. Inside of that railing with its one chair without a cushion, and the cot, like Robinson Crusoe, I was Lord of all I surveyed. The watch was composed of sixty volunteer physicians, the majority skeptical in the extreme. The authorities predicted that I would be dead or crazy if I persisted in the experiment for ten days.
"About the twelfth day of my fast the people were taking cognizance of the inhuman character of the watch; of the foul air of the hall; the entire absence of water in the building for any purpose; the method of the doctors to deprive me of the ghost of a chance to sleep; the withholding of water to drink; no mattress to sleep on; no sheets; no pillows for my head; and began to hint that the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals ought to be notified, that their intervention in my behalf would be in order. About that time the New York Herald editorially stated that the conduct of the watchers was brutal and that the doctors needed watching more than the fasting man, as they were evidently endeavoring to thwart me in my effort to do my part in an honorable manner, while the latter were endeavoring to do their utmost to prevent the success of my endeavor. Letters came from all parts of the country demanding `fair play` all around. The New York Herald established a separate watch of its own to watch the doctors as well as the faster. The Herald expended seventeen hundred dollars in its laudable efforts to insure a square deal.
"During the first fourteen days of the fast I drank no water and breathed air in the hall that would vomit an Arizona Mule. On the fourteenth day I told Dr. Gunn, the president, that unless I could have access to pure water I should fail. It was about that time that the Herald publicly announced that the doctors' conduct toward me was brutal, for the reasons already given. After this I was allowed to ride out to Central Park twice a day in the company of two M.D.'s and a reporter, the trio, with the coachman being my escort. The clear sparkling water I drank from the spring in the park, called to this day the "Tanner Spring", and that pure air I breathed filled my cup of happiness to the full.
"The most gratifying episode of my 40 days' imprisonment was the reception of the `Sims cablegram.` It created the greatest commotion among the doctors of any transpiring event up to that time. It cost Professor Sims sixty dollars to cable it, and read:
'Paris, August 2nd, 1880
'Dr. Tanner: 'Don't waste strength driving out. Standard telegrams republished everywhere, and read by everybody. Your experiment watched with great interest by scientists all over Europe, ridiculed only by fools. Courage, brave fellow. Wish you success. J. Marion Sims, M.D.`
"When the time came to break the fast, August 7, 1880, at noon, I ignored all suggestions and broke it with a peach. After eating the peach, watermelon followed, at the rate of forty-five pounds in twelve consecutive hours, sufficient food to add nine pounds to my weight in the first 24 hours after breaking my fast and 26 pounds in eight days, all that I had lost".
Source: Shelton, Herbert M., 1978, The Science and Fine Art Of Fasting
Natural Hygiene Press
1920 Irving Pk. Rd. Chicago, IL 60613 (pages 2 to 5).
