The anniversary was yesterday,  and yes, we talked about this last year, or the year before. But now we have so many more details, and the story’s even better. From the Book of Days:

“1880: Dr. H. S. Tanner of Minneapolis begins a forty-day fast in New York in an effort to prove his theory that neither the human stomach nor food is required in order to sustain life. He resides in a room in Clarendon Hall that had been carefully searched for any morsel. Dropping fifty pounds and shrinking two inches, he makes it to the end, breaking his fast on a meal of milk and watermelon.”

Imagine that press conference.

“Gentlemen, food is the body’s crutch! Food is nothing but a distraction to keep the stomach from its real purpose, which is to manufacture a substance I call phomysteron, which allows the body to absorb nutrients from the sun.”

“That’s very interesting, doctor, but why do we feel such emptiness, such pangs, when it has been a while since we ate?”

“It is but a warning not to eat, a warning we sadly never heed. We eat; we feel sleepy; hours later, the body voids itself of the noxious ‘food’ we have used to fool it.”

“Doctor, why did you hold up your index fingers there?”

“I was indicating that ‘food’ should be understood as anything but. I was putting it in quotation marks to visually emphasize the sarcasm.”

“Don’t quotation marks come in pairs? You held up one finger.”

“Not when the quote is nested inside another quote, young fellow. Any more questions? No? Then I shall enter the room, and I shall not eat anything for forty days.”

“Why stop there?”

“Who said that?”

“Johnson of the Globe. If we don’t need food, why will you eat on the forty-first day?”

“We cannot fight centuries of conditioning overnight, young fellow. I only attempt to prove that a duration of so-called ‘starvation’ is possible, and -”

“Did you have breakfast this morning? If so, what?”

“Hominy flapjacks with chicory syrup, a par-braised egg, a brace of larks, a rasher of uncured turkey sweetmeats, and a celery tonic. Now if you will excuse me. Workman? Board shut the door. I will see you gentlemen in 40 days.”

We now interrupt this fanciful recreation for actual history. It turns out that Tanner’s theory made the New York Times, where a doctor named Hammond called Tanner “a huge western joke,” an insult that has less currency these days. He meant a joke in the sense of a hoax: the article quotes Dr. Hammond as saying “I have friends in Minneapolis, who don’t know of any such doctor.” Well, that settles it.

The two learned adversaries had been feuding in the Times’ letters section, and Hammond’s contemptuous scoffing brought Tanner out to Gotham to prove his point. Hammond had demanded a 30-day fast; Tanner added a week and some change, and the experiment was begun under the careful eyes of the Neurological Association. Who knows what they thought it it all; neurology in the 19th century probably consisted of “we know the brain’s in there under the skull, but after that, it’s anyone’s guess.”

On the tenth day there were allegations of fraud, and Tanner seemed to become hysterical with dismay over the ruination of his experiment.  The article concluded: “If he lives until noon today he will have completed the eleventh day of his fast.”

He lived.  And profited: ticket sales to see the Amazing Starving Man brought in $75 a day.

Ah, but don’t think Tanner was just a fraud looking to make a buck with some theatrical public starvation. A little googling reveals that a Dr. H. S. Tanner was part of a spiritualist movement founded by John Newbrough, dentist, author of “A Catechism of Human Teeth” and “Nitrous Oxide Gas.” (The latter was described as a “defense” of the gas, which had caused the death of a patient in Newbrough’s care.) The dentist wrote an account of human history called “Oashpe,”  which he composed by typing messages received from On High. The entire text is online, of course. An excerpt:

"In Horub, an etherean world on the borders of the arc of Aza, in the procession of Sayutivi, Cnod and Gorce, a region of light, of ten thousand earth years, and one hundred vesperes, where reigned Fragapatti, Orian Chief of Obsod and Goomatchala one thousand years; Surveyor of Gies, roadway and trail of Fetisi, and Mark, seventy thousand years; Prim of Vaga, Tsein, Loo-Gaab and Zaan, forty thousand years."

Okay then! Dr. H. S. Tanner was the secretary of the organization founded to promote the ideas, and while the book from which I got the info is missing the page that details his work, it picks up with talk about “diet,” so I assume it’s the same Tanner. It’s possible he saw this new movement as a chance to make a fast dollar off some gullible society ladies eager for that new-time religion, but something about him suggests a genuine crank, a freethinker, prowling the dining room of the new colony founded on the Oashpe mythos, knocking bread-rolls out of people’s hands.

The Times picked up his story again in 1883, noting that he had a rival: a man who had fasted for FIFTY days. (Take that, Dr. Hammond.) His name was Stewart, and he was in a coma. Why? According to the story,  Stewart was a lumberman, a fellow of great appetites who did not masticate his food but bolted it whole, and consumed much tobacco juice from his habit of incessantly chewing. From the Times:

“About six years ago Stewart began to feel the effects of his indiscretions, and, after exerting his strengths to the utmost to lift a heavy piece of timber, he received a strain across his stomach which forced that organ into insurrection.”

He recovered, but the Times notes he “appears to be unable to control his appetite for tobacco and indigestible dainties.”

But thanks to the careful ministrations of a physician, he was brought coaxed back to consciousness and thrived anew. Proof! Proof a man could live almost two months without food! Who said so?

Why, Dr. Tanner. He’s the one who fed the story to the Times.

Says the Book of Days: “Dr. Tanner moved to California and died in 1919 at the age of 87.” No cause of death is given, but it would have been perfect if he’d been flatted by a grocery delivery wagon. As for Dr. Hammond, well, when Tanner finished his fortieth day, Hammond did the right thing.

He conceded.

Fragapatti be praised!