“Signor Merlatti, a young Italian, completed in December his fifty days’ fast, at the Grand Hotel, Paris, in time to enjoy the festivities of the holidays. Unlike his rival, Succi, he partook of no mysterious elixir, but existed on water alone. At the conclusion of his feat, he was so nearly dead that the surgeons were anticipating by way of dissection more light on the effects of privation from food. He was barely able to move about without help. His stomach was unable to hold any solids, and at the big banquet over which he presided he could not have had a very convivial time, as he was unable to take a mouthful of food. He has since gradually recovered. Succi, meanwhile, is engaged in another fast. He fences and takes any amount of exercise, to show that his mysterious liquid is what does it.”

This is a little over the record of Dr. Tanner, but the result is very different. Dr. Tanner came out in good condition, with a splendid and healthy appetite. In the first twenty-four hours he ate something every hour or two, indulging largely in watermelons, milk, apples, beefsteak, potatoes, English ale, and Hungarian wine. He gained eight and a half pounds weight in thirty hours. Everybody was astonished, and the doctors were confounded; the crowd cheered, and the music resounded as the fast was finished and the feasting began in Clarendon Hall, the doctor being in as good health and spirits as when he began, except as to physical strength.

Now it is proper to mention what I believe has not before been published, having been carefully concealed by Dr. Tanner. As he was encountering the whole force of a brutal prejudice in the medical profession, and trickery and falsehood were used to defeat him by Dr. Hammond and Dr. Landon C. Gray, (a shabby story indeed, if the whole truth is ever told,) Dr. Tanner did not think it safe to elicit any additional hostility by confessing his mediumship.

The whole performance was a triumph of spiritual power! Dr. Tanner came to me in New York to aid him in giving a demonstration of his fasting power, which had been denied in an insolent and scurrilous manner by Dr. Hammond and others. Dr. Hammond, with a great deal of duplicity and unfairness, evaded the test, and it was carried out with the aid of other parties in a very satisfactory manner.

The organization of Dr. Tanner was not such as I would have selected for a fasting performance, and he did not undertake it on his own resources alone. He was thoroughly a medium, and, when in my parlor, Indian spirits would take control of him, and carry him through a lively performance, speaking through his lips, and promising to sustain him through the fast; and they did. I have no doubt that with a suitable organization, such as is more frequently found in India than in America, a fast could be sustained by spirit power for six or twelve months. Indeed, there are records of such fasts in the old medical authors, which are omitted in all recent works. The spirit of dogmatic scepticism had carried the medical profession generally into such a depth of ignorance on these subjects that Dr. Landon C. Gray declared that a forty days’ fast had never occurred, and that if Dr. Tanner attempted it, it must be assumed “that he will cheat at every turn.”

The kind of sentiment cultivated by colleges in the medical profession was shown by the deportment of the medical visitors. The report of the fast says:—

“The most curious episodes, probably, on the whole, were afforded by the appearance of sceptics, and members of the medical profession from the country. Many of the latter came long distances to satisfy their respective curiosity, or vent their scepticism, as the case might be. As a rule they were long-visaged, not a few were unkempt, and many were downright seedy in wearing apparel. Almost invariably they insisted upon boring the doctor with numberless questions, many of which were idle. The majority displayed ignorance, and it might truthfully be said, they were rude almost without exception. One man insisted upon feeling Dr. Tanner’s arms and legs; another wanted to feel his pulse; a third demanded a view of his tongue; a fourth declared food must be given to him surreptitiously, else he would be dead; a fifth wanted to search his pockets; the sixth asserted his professional reputation (sic) that there was fraud about the whole business; the seventh had some patent surgical, or other appliance, which he wished to test upon the patient; and yet another wanted to analyze even the water he used, before the faster drank it.

“The effect of these boors in their constant inroads upon a fasting man, whose surroundings and conditions were not of the best, to say the least, may be easily imagined. When these fanatics were prevented by the watchers from extracting what little of life was left in the object of their devotions, their indignation took various forms of expression. As a rule they denounced the whole thing as a humbug, and every one participating as frauds. Now and then it became positively necessary, in common decency and self-respect, to show these charlatans the way to the door, notwithstanding their protests that they had paid twenty-five cents for the purpose of ventilating their empty heads. As a general thing, by Dr. Tanner’s direction, the admission fee was returned to these people. Even on the thirty-ninth day, when the doctor desired all the quiet he could obtain, one of these gentry, who said he was a physician from Long Island, talked so loudly that he had to be called to order, and then nothing daunted, he asked the faster to go in his enfeebled condition to the south gallery, where his writing materials were, to prepare an autograph for the applicant. The Herald reporter on watch at the time, through whom the request was made for the autograph, gave the fellow a settler by remarking, that he, as a layman, thought the first rudiments taught in the medical profession, were those of feelings of humanity.

“Then the wits had their time of it. They showered in caricatures and doggerel by the barrel. None enjoyed these more than the doctor himself. By his direction the funniest of the cartoons were pasted against the wall of the gallery in which the doctor slept and the watchers sat. Above the whole was the legend in German text, ‘Tanner Art Gallery,’ and during the closing days and hours of the fast it was a source of much attraction and a great deal of merriment to the thousands of visitors who sought the place.”

Before the fasting began I witnessed an amusing specimen of the medical scepticism. One of the medical visitors inspected the hall closely, and finding in the back part that a piece of nearly worn out carpet remained on the floor, proceeded to rip it up and tear it away, as if he suspected there might be a trap door concealed.

Medical education has been miserably cramped and benighted by the total ignoring of the nobler element of the human constitution.