for structural maintenance. Some paralyzing influence prevents nourishment of nerve centers and shuts off the life current. No agent more destructive of both physical and mental functions exists than unreasoning fear, and it plays its part in accidental situations where food is denied, such as mine disasters, shipwrecks, and the like, since here mental suffering affects the physical balance, and the cause of death lies in the conditions of the circumstances, and not in the fact that the body is deprived of food, for, in favorable surroundings, weeks and even months may pass ere death occur from lack of sustenance.
It is questionable whether, in a conscious being not afflicted with organic defect, or not situated so that food cannot be supplied when hunger calls, death has ever resulted from starvation, or, in other words, from the exhaustion of brain food stored in body tissue. No conclusive evidence shows that this has ever happened.
The autopsies that were held upon the bodies of the patients, of whom the causes of death are here described, disclosed in every instance organic disease, the origin of which lay in the earlier years of life. In
