Fasting
in ordinary language, the act or state of abstaining partially or entirely from food. In medicine, loss of appetite without any other apparent affection of the stomach; so that the system can sustain almost total abstinence for a long time without fainting. For a number of years a lively discussion has been carried on as to the length of time a human being could exist while voluntarily fasting. Dr. Tanner, in New York City, fasted for 40 days without any illeffects, and his fast found several imitators. Nothing of scientific value resulted from the experiment. Terence McSwiney, Lord-Mayor of Cork, Ireland, refused FAT food while in prison, and died on the 63d day of his fast, in October, 1920.
Other Irish prisoners carried on a food strike for over fifty days and several of them died. See IRELAND.
Among the Ethnic Nations. Its chief object was to produce religious exaltation, with visions, dreams, and imagined intercourse with superior beings. Fasting exists for this purpose among the North American Indians and many other tribes. Dreams, visions, etc., thus produced are not supernatural, but morbid.
Among the Jews. It was practiced in seasons of affliction, nature having in a manner prescribed this by taking hunger away during keen sorrow (I Sam. xxxi: 13; Esther iv.); to chasten or humble the soul (Psalm xxxv: 13; lxix: 10).
Among Christians. - Jesus miraculously fasted 40 days and nights (Matt. iv: 2; Luke iv: 2), as Moses and Elijah had done previously (Exod. xxxiv: 28; I Kings xix: 8), and as several Roman saints claim to have done since. The practice is not, however, formally enjoined in the New Testament, though our Lord indirectly sanctioned it (Matt. vi.: 16-18), as did St. Paul (I Cor. vii: 5).
The apostles and the Church of which they constituted a part practiced it on specially solemn occasions (Acts xiii: 2; xiv: 23). In the Roman and Greek obedience, communion must be received fasting, except when administered by way of viaticum.