For a number of years Mrs Webb (Beatrice Webb) was addicted to fasting, from motives partly hygienic and partly religious. She would have no breakfast and a very meagre dinner. Her only solid meal was lunch. She almost always had a number of distinguished people to lunch, but she would get so hungry that the moment it was announced she marched in ahead of all her guests and started to eat. She nevertheless believed that starvation made her more spiritual, and once told me that it gave her exquisite visions.
'Yes,' I replied, 'if you eat too little, you see visions ; and if you drink too much, you see snakes,'
I am afraid she thought this remark inexcusably flippant.
Source: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, v.1 :
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