3-077-999 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Visiting the Fasting Man at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster, 1890. 'The sequestered and canopied space has been daily visited by numbers of people, willing to pay an extra fee, and their curiosity has been gratified by seeing an Italian gentleman, of sallow complexion and evidently, though muscular, without an ounce of spare flesh...we are unable to state what official authority...has made itself in any degree responsible for observing a case of such great scientific interest...on Monday, April 21, the thirty-fifth day of this trial, it was certified...that an enema had been applied...We are told, by those who conduct the exhibition, that Signor Succi has eaten nothing, and has not taken, in any way, a particle of nutritious food, since March 17... The newspaper accounts of his repeated abstinences from food...have gained celebrity; and the Academy of Florence awarded him a diploma of scientific merit...The close confinement, day and night, to a gas-lighted, ill-ventilated apartment might have been expected to injure his health; but we do not hear that it is so. He has lost weight 30 lb. 14 oz...Signor Succi...is permitted to solace himself with a pipe or cigar whenever he pleases...An attendant showman discourses to the crowd of visitors'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.