1. By the stimulus of a full gall bladder. This state of the receptacle of bile has generally been found to accompany an empty stomach. The bile is sometimes absorbed, and imparts a yellow colour to the skin of persons who suffer or die of famine. 2. By increased acrimony in all the secretions and excretions of the body. The saliva becomes so acrid by long fasting, as to excoriate the gums, and the breath acquires not only a f[oe]tor, but a pungency so active, as to draw tears from the eyes of persons who are exposed to it. 3. By increased sensibility and excitability in the sense of touch. The blind man mentioned by Mr. Boyle, who could distinguish colours by his fingers, possessed this talent only after fasting. Even a draught of any kind of liquor deprived him of it. I have taken notice, in my account of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, in the year 1793, of the effects of a diet bordering upon fasting for six weeks, in producing a quickness and correctness in my perceptions of the state of the pulse, which I had never experienced before. 4. By an increase of activity in the understanding and passions. Gamesters often improve the exercises of their minds, when they are about to play for a large sum of money, by living for a day or two upon roasted apples and cold water. Where the passions are excited into preternatural action, the absence of the stimulus of food is scarcely felt. I shall hereafter mention the influence of the desire of life upon its preservation, under all circumstances. It acts with peculiar force when fasting is accidental. But when it is submitted to as a religious duty, it is accompanied by sentiments and feelings which more than balance the abstraction of aliment. The body of Moses was sustained, probably without a miracle, during an abstinence of forty days and forty nights, by the pleasure he derived from conversing with his Maker "face to face, as a man speaking with his friend[96]." [95] The stimulus of a disease sometimes supplies the place of food in prolonging life. Mr. C. S----, a gentleman well known in Virginia, who was afflicted with a palsy, which had resisted the skill of several physicians, determined to destroy himself, by abstaining from food and drinks. He lived _sixty_ days without eating any thing, and the greatest part of that time without tasting even a drop of water. His disease probably protracted his life thus long beyond the usual time in which death is induced by fasting. See a particular account of this case, in the first number of the second volume of Dr. Coxe's Medical Museum. [96] Exodus xxxiii, 11. xxxiv, 28. I remarked formerly, that the veins discover no deficiency of blood in persons who die of famine. Death from this cause seems to be less the effect of the want of food, than of the combined and excessive operation of the stimuli, which supply its place in the system.