HE BREAKS HIS FAST
HARLAN SUCCUMBS TO BEEF-
STEAK ON THIRTEENTH DAY.
Weight Is Reduced From 275 to 237
Pounds -- Finds That His Ap=
petite Is Easily Ap-
peased Now.
P. H. Harlan, the faster, with the newly formed "never eat" cult on his hands, has capitulated on his thirteenth day. But now, though he has given his stomach carte blanch, he find it next to impossible to eat.
Harlan believes it was not necessity that caused him to break over, but the fact that his first intent was to make two weeks his goal. "And as that time drew near I found that I couldn't argue myself into going beyond it," he said yesterday.
"Instead, Saturday I commenced to get fiercely hungry. I fought off the idea of surrendering until midnight. Then I felt I was going. As a last resort I thought I might walk it off. Charlie McGannon here at the office, who has been my adviser throughout the fast, went along and tried to talk me into sticking a few days longer anyway, but at 1 o'clock beefsteak had won the argument. In fact the beefsteak's victory was so complete that I tipped the waiter in advance to have the order railroaded. And then, to think, I couldn't eat it. I actually got down less than a dozen mouthfuls. Stranger still, this so satiated me that at 9 o'clock this morning, when I tried toast and coffee, that wouldn't go down. The toast actually stuck in my throat. For 2 o'clock dinner I thought I'd try chicken. Chicken is the one thing that has all my life been most tempting to me but I could only nibble at it."
This experience of his inability to eat convinces Harlan that he would have found it easy to continue fasting, and he thinks, proves that any one who succeeds in fasting two weeks need not fear that his body is suffering for food.
His loss in weight in the thirteen days was 48 pounds, almost an average of 3 pounds a day, his weight being reduced from 275 to 237 pounds. Dr. I. J. Eales, the Belleville, Ill., physician who fasted the entire month of June, lost 71 pounds, going in thirty days from 235 pounds down to 164 pounds. He was the inspiration of Harlan and Hogan's fast.
Cliff Hogan, an automobile dealer next door to J. C. Duffy's where Harlan is employed, started to fast two days before Harlan, but stopped at the end of nine days. He was suddenly tempted into eating by seeing a plate of doughnuts,, and unlike Harlan found himself eating ravenously before he knew it.
Harlan's weight fell off more rapidly in his last two days which were cool than in the intermediate days of his fast when extreme heat helped make him drink a great volume of water. The first four days his loss averaged six pounds a day.
