The jail rule that unsentenced prisoners might not work kept Sacco in idleness, intensifying the feelings of persecution that he had developed after the trial. On February 14, 1923, he began his hunger strike. Sheriff Capen made no attempt to force him to eat, and by the middle of March he had grown noticeably weaker. On the afternoon of the sixteenth, at Judge Thayer’s request, he was examined by Charles Cahoon, superintendent of the Medfield State Hospital; Albert Thomas, superintendent of the Foxboro State Hospital; and a Boston psychiatrist, Abraham Meyerson. Sacco, lying on his cot, calmly explained to the doctors that the state was trying to kill him. Poison was being put into his food—even into the food his wife brought him; poisonous vapors were being blown into his cell and electric currents circulated under his bed. His suffering had become so intense, he explained, that he could not permit it to go much further. When Dr. Cahoon asked him why he drank water, which would prolong his life, he “stated that he did not want to die too quickly because, on account of a hearing for a new trial he felt that he should allow his counsel some opportunity to plead. He had no confidence, however, that he would get a new trial; he did not expect any justice from the state or the government.” The doctors found that Sacco was mentally disturbed, and Judge Thayer ordered him to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital for observation. On his arrival he was warned by Dr. Meyerson, “Nick, they have sent you here to eat, and if you don’t, we will feed you with a tube.” According to the newspaper reports he was then forcibly fed by an attendant in the doctor’s presence, although Sacco later claimed that he broke his strike voluntarily. “You know,” he told another doctor some months afterward, “I have read in an Italian magazine that you can live a long time if they feed you with a tube; I knew this, and then I was too weak and could not fight them, so I said, I go ahead and eat. I was against going because I wanted justice.” For the first two days in the hospital he lay on his cot and was fed broth and gruel every hour. Then he began to eat regularly, gaining ten pounds within a week. His Dedham delusions vanished and he spoke of them as “all a mistake” and “prejudices.” Although he identified the hospital with the state that was persecuting him, he was friendly with the doctors, sometimes speaking of his love for his wife and children and his feeling for the out-of-doors, joking about his hairiness that “proved the correctness of Darwin’s theory,” or talking about his work as sole-trimmer.