Starvation

death resulting from a want or deficiency of food. The average human being is able to live from eight to ten days without food or water. A supply of water even without food, prolongs life. Miners have been recovered after fourteen days' confinement in a damp vault and have lived. Persons in a trance have been known to live sixty days or more without food or drink. The fatty portions of the body are the first to disappear. It is stated on good authority that, at the starvation point, a person has lost 93 per cent of his fat; 75 per cent of the blood; 33 per cent of the skin; 42 per cent of the muscles; 22 per cent of the lungs; 22 per cent of the bones; 10 per cent of the eyes; etc.; but that the nervous system has lost less than 2 per cent. The nervous system retains its normal weight. Fleshy persons resist starvation longer than spare people. Ordinarily death sets in when the body has lost about forty per cent of its normal weight. The first stages of starvation are marked by lethargy or stupor. In the later stages, the nervous system, retaining full power, is apt to produce insanity, taking the form usually of imbecility and idiocy, but sometimes that of mania. Flesh-eating animals can go without food longer than herbivorous animals. The wolf can do without food for weeks if need be. Cats and dogs lose from 33 to 40 per cent of their weight before they succumb to starvation. Horses, oxen, and sheep may endure a loss of 20 to 25 per cent before death ensues. See Food