Farmer O’Leary of Elkton, Minnesota, is over 112. Noah Raby of Plainfield, New Jersey, is in his 115th year. He supports himself by his work in the summer, and looks like a man of 80.
Of very recent deaths we have: Amos Hunt of Barnesville, Georgia, who died at 105, leaving twenty-three of his twenty-eight children. Mrs. Raymond of Wilton, Connecticut, was still living recently in her 106th year. Ben Evans, part Indian, part negro, a great hunter of Wilkes County, Georgia, died at 107; baptized after he was 100. Mrs. Betsy L. Moody died on the 4th of July in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, aged 104. Wm. Henry Williams of Cincinnati, died a few months ago at 102. James Fitzgerald of Prince Edwards Island, over a hundred years old, is still able to work. Mrs. Lydia Van Ranst lately died on East 16th Street, New York, aged 100 years and ten months; and Mrs. Johanna O’Sullivan in Boston in her 103d year. Mrs. Betsy Perkins of Rome, N. Y., was apparently in excellent health when she died suddenly at the breakfast table in her 101st year. Rev. Hugh Call died in Wayne County, Indiana, at 104. After his hundredth year he once fancied death was near, and sent for his family to see him die; but when they arrived in midwinter, they found the old man busy cutting wood to make a fire for his visitors.
Many of these examples show that the faculties of both soul and body ought to be maintained in good condition to the last, as fruit falls from the trees ripe and perfect. When we leave our earthly tenement, we ought to leave it in a respectable condition, and not carry any infirmities from it to the better world.
Remarkable Fasting.
“Signor Merlatti, a young Italian, completed in December his fifty days’ fast, at the Grand Hotel, Paris, in time to enjoy the festivities of the holidays. Unlike his rival, Succi, he partook of no mysterious elixir, but existed on water alone. At the conclusion of his feat, he was so nearly dead that the surgeons were anticipating by way of dissection more light on the effects of privation from food. He was barely able to move about without help. His stomach was unable to hold any solids, and at the big banquet over which he presided he could not have had a very convivial time, as he was unable to take a mouthful of food. He has since gradually recovered. Succi, meanwhile, is engaged in another fast. He fences and takes any amount of exercise, to show that his mysterious liquid is what does it.”
This is a little over the record of Dr. Tanner, but the result is very different. Dr. Tanner came out in good condition, with a splendid and healthy appetite. In the first twenty-four hours he ate something every hour or two, indulging largely in watermelons, milk, apples, beefsteak, potatoes, English ale, and Hungarian wine. He gained eight and a half pounds weight in thirty hours. Everybody was astonished, and the doctors were confounded; the crowd cheered, and the music resounded as the fast was finished and the feasting began in Clarendon Hall, the doctor being in as good health and spirits as when he began, except as to physical strength.
Now it is proper to mention what I believe has not before been published, having been carefully concealed by Dr. Tanner. As he was encountering the whole force of a brutal prejudice in the medical profession, and trickery and falsehood were used to defeat him by Dr. Hammond and Dr. Landon C. Gray, (a shabby story indeed, if the whole truth is ever told,) Dr. Tanner did not think it safe to elicit any additional hostility by confessing his mediumship.
The whole performance was a triumph of spiritual power! Dr. Tanner came to me in New York to aid him in giving a demonstration of his fasting power, which had been denied in an insolent and scurrilous manner by Dr. Hammond and others. Dr. Hammond, with a great deal of duplicity and unfairness, evaded the test, and it was carried out with the aid of other parties in a very satisfactory manner.
The organization of Dr. Tanner was not such as I would have selected for a fasting performance, and he did not undertake it on his own resources alone. He was thoroughly a medium, and, when in my parlor, Indian spirits would take control of him, and carry him through a lively performance, speaking through his lips, and promising to sustain him through the fast; and they did. I have no doubt that with a suitable organization, such as is more frequently found in India than in America, a fast could be sustained by spirit power for six or twelve months. Indeed, there are records of such fasts in the old medical authors, which are omitted in all recent works. The spirit of dogmatic scepticism had carried the medical profession generally into such a depth of ignorance on these subjects that Dr. Landon C. Gray declared that a forty days’ fast had never occurred, and that if Dr. Tanner attempted it, it must be assumed “that he will cheat at every turn.”