Starvation
Anorexia nervosa has been referred to as a subconscious form of suicide. However, death as a result of self-starvation in AN is not listed on death certificates as suicide.
A hunger strike may ultimately lead to death. Starvation has been used by Hindu and Jain monks as a ritual method of penance (known as Prayopavesa and Santhara respectively), and Albigensians or Cathars also fasted after receiving the 'consolamentum' sacrament, in order to die while in a morally perfect state. This method of death is often associated with political protest, such as the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike by Irish republican paramilitary prisoners demanding prisoner of war status, of whom ten died. The explorer Thor Heyerdahl refused to eat or take medication for the last month of his life, after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Read more about this topic: Tentative Wound
Famous quotes containing the word starvation:
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“The spectacle of misery grew in its crushing volume. There seemed to be no end to the houses full of hunted starved children. Children with dysentery, children with scurvy, children at every stage of starvation.... We learned to know that the barometer of starvation was the number of children deserted in any community.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)