Part 8

"Dr. Speir was found in his comfortable little office, and the errand of the writer made known:--

"'Is it true, Doctor, that a patient of yours has lived for fourteen years without taking food?'

"'If you refer to Miss Fancher, yes. She became my patient in 1864. Her case is a most remarkable one.'

"'But has she eaten nothing during all these years?'

"'I can safely say she has not.'

"'Are the family also willing to vouch for the truth of this extraordinary statement?'

"'You will find them very reticent to newspaper men and to strangers generally. I do not believe any food--that is, solids--ever passed the woman's lips since her attack of paralysis, consequent upon her mishap. As for an occasional teaspoonful of water or milk, I sometimes force her to take it by using an instrument to pry open her mouth, but that is painful to her. As early as 1865 I endeavored to sustain life in this way, for I feared that, in obedience to the universal law of nature, she would die of gradual inanition or exhaustion, which I thought would sooner or later ensue; but I was mistaken. The case knocks the bottom out of all existing medical theories, and is, in a word, miraculous.'

"'Did you ever,' asked the reporter, 'make an experiment to satisfy your professional accuracy in regard to her abstinence?'

"'Several times I have given her emetics on purpose to discover the truth; but the result always confirmed the statement that she had taken no food. It sounds strangely, but it is so. I have taken every precaution against deception, sometimes going into the house at eleven or twelve o'clock at night, without being announced, but have always found her the same, and lying in the same position occupied by her for the entire period of her invalidity. The springs of her bedstead are actually worn out with the constant pressure. My brethren in the medical profession at first were inclined to laugh at me, and call me a fool and spiritualist when I told them of the long abstinence and keen mental powers of my interesting patient. But such as have been admitted to see her are convinced. These are Dr. Ormiston, Dr. Elliott and Dr. Hutchison, some of the best talent in the city, who have seen and believed.'"

And then the following account is given of the accident from which the young lady suffered, and to which the remarkable phenomena she is said to exhibit are ascribed:

"The story of Miss Fancher's accident and its melancholy consequences is quite affecting. It is collected from the various statements given by half a dozen friends of the family to the Herald reporter. Interwoven with it is a thread of romance, a tale of early love and courtship, of a life embittered by a cruel accident, of patient waiting, and a final release of the suitor from his engagement to marry another.

"Mary's parents live in a sumptuous dwelling on Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, and were reported to be wealthy. Their favorite daughter Mollie, as she was called, was sent to Prof. West's High School in Brooklyn at an early age, and here developed many brilliant qualities of mind and heart, which augured well for her future. At seventeen she was pretty, petite and well cultivated. As a member of the Washington Avenue Baptist Sunday School, she met and learned to love a classmate, named John Taylor. An engagement followed the intimacy of the Sunday School class, and the young people looked forward with buoyant spirits to the bright life so soon to dawn upon them.

"But fate decreed differently. While getting off a Fulton Street car one day in 1864, on her return from school, the young lady slipped and fell backward. Her skirt caught on the step unseen by the conductor, who started the car on its way again. The poor girl was dragged some ten or fifteen yards before her cries were heard and the brake applied. When picked up she was insensible and was carried, suffering intense agony from an injured spine, to her home near by. Forty-eight hours afterward she was seized with a violent spasm which lasted for over two days. Then came a trance, when the sufferer grew cold and rigid, with no evidence of life beyond a warm spot under the left breast, where feeble pulsations of her heart were detected by Dr. Speir. Only this gentleman believed she was alive, and it was due to his constant assertion of the girl's ultimate recovery that Miss Fancher was not buried. Despite the best medical help and the application of restoratives, no change was brought about in the patient's condition until the tenth week, when the strange suspension of life ceased and breath was once more inhaled and breathed forth from her lungs.

"To their dismay the doctors then found that Mollie had lost her sight and the power of deglutition, the latter affliction rendering it impossible for her to swallow food or even articulate by the use of tongue or lip. Previous to her trance a moderate quantity of food had been given her each day; but since then she has not taken a mouthful of life-sustaining food. Spasms and trances alternated with alarming frequency since Miss Fancher was first attacked. First her limbs only became rigid and disturbed at the caprice of her strange malady; but as time passed her whole frame writhed as if in great pain, requiring to be held by main force in order to remain in the bed. She could swallow nothing, and lay utterly helpless until moved."

In the Sun, of November 24th, 1878, a fuller account of this young lady was given, mainly however, in regard to her "clairvoyant," or "second-sight" power. Relative to her abstinence from food, I quote the following conversation between the reporter and Dr. Speir.

"'Is it true that she has not partaken of food in all these thirteen years?'

"'No: I cannot say that she has not; I have not been constantly with her for thirteen years; she may have taken food in my absence. Her friends have used every device to make her take nourishment. Food has been forced upon her, and artificial means have been resorted to that it might be carried to her stomach. Nevertheless, the amount in the aggregate must have been very small in all these years.'

"'You have considered the case of such extraordinary importance as to take many physicians to see it?'

"'I have, and it has excited very much of attention. I have letters about it from far and near, and the medical journals have asked for information.'"

And this with Dr. Ormiston:

"Dr. Robert Ormiston, who has been one of Miss Fancher's physicians from the first, who has seen her constantly in all the different conditions of her system, said yesterday that he was convinced that there could be no deception. He could find no motive for it, and he did not believe that she had attempted it. As to her not partaking of food, he had with Dr. Speir made tests that satisfied him that she ate no more than she pretended to, and in the aggregate it had not, in all these years, amounted to more than the amount eaten at a single meal by a healthy man. Dr. Ormiston narrated many curious incidents of the girl's illness, and verified the facts of her physical condition as narrated elsewhere."

In order that no injustice may be done to these gentlemen, I quote the following from the Sun of November 26th:

"Dr. R. Fleet Speir, one of Miss Fancher's physicians, smiled last evening when the Sun reporter asked him what he thought of Dr. Hammond's opinions on the case. 'I probably have just as high an opinion of Dr. Hammond's opinions as Dr. Hammond has of mine,' he said. 'My opinion on the case of Miss Fancher I have always refused to give to any one. When I first took the case, years ago, I told the family that I would not give them an opinion on it; that I would do what I could with it, and that I hoped to bring about a cure. I do not believe in clairvoyance or second sight, or anything of the kind. I think I stand with the most rigid school on that subject.'

"'But do you think Miss Fancher deceives or endeavors to?'

"The Doctor smiled again. 'Now I do not want you to interview me on that. My theory has along been to do nothing to irritate my patient; I humored her, and have endeavored in that way to get her confidence, to get complete control of her, if possible. In that way I may get her mind diverted, and by and by get her out of bed. I have hoped to see her cured. I do not see what earthly good a scientific investigation would do her. On the contrary, it would harm her. Put a relay of physicians to watch her, and she would undoubtedly do her best to beat them. She would hold out against them, and likely as not die.'

"Dr. Robert Ormiston said that he thought that the Brooklyn physicians knew quite as much about the case as their New York brethren, and that their opinions were of as much weight. 'It has become a most interesting case from a medical standpoint, because during her long illness, she has gone through all the different phases of hysteria that have heretofore been observed in many different cases. I think I am correct in this statement.'"

From all that can be ascertained therefore, it appears that the young lady in question received a severe injury to the spinal cord, in consequence of which she became paralyzed in the lower extremities, in which members contractions also took place. It is probable also that the great sympathetic nerve and brain were involved in the injury.

Confined to her bed, her bodily temperature being low, and passing a good of her time in trances or periods of insensibility, the requirements of the system as regarded food would necessarily be limited. But this is the most that can be said. She did breathe, her heart did beat, she required some bodily heat, and the various other functions of her organism could not have been maintained without the expenditure of matter of some kind. During abstinence from food the body itself is consumed for these purposes, and there being no renovation, no supplies from without, it loses weight with every instant of time until death finally ensues. An emaciated person can withstand this drain less effectually than one who is stout and fat.