During Mental Health Month, authors Janelle Molony and Jodi Decker will present for the St. Peter Lions Club at Gustavus Adolphus College the true story of their relative, “Martha Nasch: the Women Who Never Ate, Drank, or Slept for Seven Years.”
Martha Nasch was a first generation German-American from Belle Plaine and the subject of the 2021 award-winning nonfiction, “Poems from the Asylum.”
The author talk, scheduled for Tuesday, May 23 at noon will include perspectives on medical and mental health, specifically as it applied to women in the Depression Era. They will share the findings from nearly 100 years of medical case studies on what caused Martha Nasch’s “supernatural condition” that landed her in the St. Peter asylum from 1928 to 1934.
The authors will also be speaking later that night at the St. Peter Library from 6-7 p.m.
“I could not eat or drink. I did not want it. … And because I refused to eat, I was sent to St. Peter [asylum]…” – Martha Nasch, 1934 quote given to the LaCrosse Tribune after her release.
After being released to her husband in St. Paul, Martha Nasch tried to go public with her stories. “They thought I was insane,” Nasch confessed to ACME news in 1934, “but I was perfectly normal in every other way.” Yet, Nasch’s bold claims created such controversy that news media shredded her reputation, calling her “derided,” and claiming this feat was “bunk.”
Author Janelle Molony has concluded that, though it is hard for people to understand, “not one person, not even her spouse, child, or the hospital [asylum] has been able to disprove her claims of nutritional abstinence.”
While institutionalized, Martha Nasch wrote down poetic testimonies of what happened inside. Her writing escaped nursing staff censorship and reveal the tragic state of mental health care practices during this time. In one poem, she reflected, “I’m judged as a goof and a nut, and classed far less than a mule.”
Now, co-biographers Molony and Decker (who are also Nasch’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter), lay out a case for the woman now hailed as an early proponent of the food-less Breatharian lifestyle.
