Fasting Girls

A frail girl claims she has lived for years without food—and clergymen, professors, even physicians offer certificates in support. William A. Hammond begins with the question behind the spectacle: why believe what reason says cannot be true?

In this late-nineteenth-century inquiry, Hammond looks back to medieval saints and the possessed, whose stories of miraculous fasting once stirred wonder and fear. He then turns to the “fasting girls” of his own time, examining their claims through the physiology and psychology of hysteria rather than accepting them as marvels. With sharp skepticism, he asks what the witnesses truly saw—and what hunger, illness, or deception may explain. When even a close watch seems to prove that no food was taken, what would count as proof?

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