Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) BY THE SAME AUTHOR. CEREBRAL HYPERÆMIA: THE RESULT OF MENTAL STRAIN OR EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCES. 16mo, cloth ... $1 00 "Under the disguise of these hard words, Dr. Hammond presents a variety of admirable counsels, with regard to an excess of blood in the head, pointing out its causes, its symptoms, the mode of its medical treatment, and the means of its prevention."--_N. Y. Tribune._ "The work is not only of interest to the medical man, but also is one easily understood and to be read with profit by brain-workers of all classes, whether in profession, in literature or business. It treats of the cause of headaches, the wakefulness, the illusions or delusions, and feelings of tightness in the head, which so many of our American writers and thinkers experience, and it gives valuable information available by laymen as to the prevention and remedy for this affection, which later on leads to insanity or death."--_Boston Traveller._ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK. FASTING GIRLS; THEIR PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY BY WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M.D. PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF THE MIND AND NERVOUS SYSTEM IN THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, AND IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT. ETC. "There is no new thing under the Sun." --_Eccl._ I, 9. "Nil spernat auris, nec tamen credat statim." --PHÆDRUS. NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 FIFTH AVENUE 1879 COPYRIGHT BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 1879. PREFACE. In issuing this little book I have been actuated by a desire to do something towards the removal of a lamentable degree of popular ignorance. It seems that no proposition that can be made is so absurd or impossible but that many people, ordinarily regarded as intelligent, will be found to accept it and to aid in its propagation. And hence, when it is asserted that a young lady has lived for fourteen years without food of any kind, hundreds and thousands of persons throughout the length and breadth of a civilized land at once yield their belief to the monstrous declaration.