From the 1880s to the 1920s, hunger artists - professional fasters - lived on the fringes of public spectacle and academic experiment. Agust Nieto-Galan presents the history of this phenomenon as popular urban spectacle and subject of scientific study, showing how hunger artists acted as mediators between the human and the social body. Doctors, journalists, impresarios, artists, and others used them to reinforce their different philosophical views,...