ABSTINENCE

ABSTINENCE is more particularly used for a spare diet, or a slender parsimonious use of food, below the ordinary standard of nature. The physicians relate wonders of the effects of abstinence in the cure of many disorders, and protracting the term of life. The noble Venetian, Cornaro, after all imaginable means had proved vain, so that his life was despaired of at forty, recovered, and lived to near an hundred, by mere dint of abstinence; as he himself gives the account. It is indeed surprising to what a great age the primitive

Christians of the East, who retired from the persecutions into the deserts of Arabia and Egypt, lived, healthful and cheerful, on a very little food. Cassian assures us, that the common rate for 24 hours was 12 ounces of bread, and mere water: with this St Anthony lived 105 years; James the hermit, 104; Arfenius, tutor of the Emperor Arcadius, 120; S. Epiphanius, 115; Simeon the Stylite, 112; and Romuald, 120. Indeed, we can match these instances of longevity at home. Buchanan writes, that one Laurence preserved himself to 140 by force of temperance and labour; and Spotswood mentions one Kentigern, afterwards called S. Mongah or Mungo, who lived to 185 by the same means. Other instances see under the article LONGEVITY.—Abstinence, however, is to be recommended only as it means a proper regimen; for in general it must have bad consequences when observed without a due regard to constitution, age, strength, &c. According to Dr Cheyne, most of the chronicl diseases, the infirmities of old age, and the short lives of Englishmen, are owing to repletion; and may be either cured, prevented, or remedied by abstinence: but then the kinds of abstinence which ought to obtain, either in sickness or health, are to be deduced from the laws of diet and regimen*.

Among the brute creation, we see extraordinary instances of long abstinence. The serpent-kind, in particular, bear abstinence to a wonderful degree. We have seen rattle-snakes that had subsisted many months without any food, yet still retained their vigour and fierceness. Dr Shaw speaks of a couple of cerasles, (a sort of Egyptian serpents), which had been kept five years in a bottle close corked, without any sort of food, unless a small quantity of sand wherein they coiled themselves up in the bottom of the vessel may be reckoned as such: yet when he saw them, they had newly cast their skins, and were as brisk and lively as if just taken. But it is even natural for divers species to pass four, five, or six months every year, without either eating or drinking. Accordingly, the tortoise, bear, dormouse, serpent, &c. are observed regularly to retire, at those seasons, to their respective cells, and hide themselves, some in the caverns of rocks or ruins; others dig holes under ground; others get into woods, and lay themselves up in the clefts of trees; others bury themselves under water, &c. And these animals are found as fat and fleshy after some months abstinence as before.—Sir G. Ent* weighed his tortoise several years successively, at its going to earth in October, and coming out again in March; and found, that, of four pounds four ounces, it only used to lose about one ounce.—Indeed, we have instances of men passing several months as strictly abstinent as other creatures. In particular, the records of the Tower mention a Scotchman imprisoned for felony, and strictly watched in that fortress for six weeks: in all which time he took not the least sustenance; for which he had his pardon. Numberless instances of extraordinary abstinence, particularly from morbid causes, are to be found in the different periodical Memoirs, Transactions, Ephemerides, &c.—It is to be added, that, in most instances of extraordinary human abstinence related by naturalists, there were said to have been apparent marks of a texture of blood and humours, much like that of the animals above mentioned. Though it is no improbable opinion, that the air itself may

Abstainers may furnish something for nutrition. It is certain, there are substances of all kinds, animal, vegetable, &c. floating in the atmosphere, which must be continually taken in by respiration. And that an animal body may be nourished thereby, is evident in the instance of vapors, which if taken when first brought forth, and kept from every thing but air, will yet grow very considerably in a few days. So the eggs of lizards are observed to increase in bulk, after they are produced, though there be nothing to furnish the increment but air alone; in like manner as the eggs or spawn of fishes grow and are nourished with the water. And hence, say some, it is that cooks, turnspit-dogs, &c. though they eat but little, yet are usually fat.