Physical symptoms of Starvation.
--Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne writes to the London Times concerning the physical process of famine:‘ When famine destroys life it may do so under two different conditions. Stoppage of all food — such as that we have read of in the case of the shipwrecked — bring on in a short time a train of symptoms which quickly end in the most horrible of deaths. The other condition is that when food sufficient, of not in abundance gradually becomes diminished in quality, then in quantity, passing to still another stage, where it is not only altogether deficient in quantity, but also in the qualities necessary each day to rebuild nature's waste, and thus provide for the next day's life.
On this stinting of physical sustenance supervenes mental depression, causing loss of appetite, thus there is indisposition to partake even of that measure of food which, itself insufficient, is still necessary to keep up some existence.
Strange to say, at this stage of depression in mind and of gradual waste of body, the sufferer complains but little, if at all; there is tendency to sloop, rest — anyhow, anywhere, not little evidence of pain. There is, however, to the skilled eye a cast of eye unmistakable; the children look aged beyond their years, adults move and speak with a gait and utterance which seems to shun all effort.
Falling fever, famine goes on to run its own well marked course. I write from what I and many others saw, watched, and noted. With no real complaint developed, with little real pain, there is an increase of latitude in the adult, a want of all children energy in the young — a species of patient; masters the whole man You have a trophy now showing itself in many ways. The hair the head in patches the ankles swell, the vain is bloodless, the eyes sunken. At this stage food fails medicine falls, care cannot rescue. It is a more matter of time. Few, if any, recover — few seem to wish it.
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