When a community is faced with the question of how to treat its criminals — or, for that matter, its local heroes — the answers usually are simple. Punish the criminals. Reward and honor the heroes.

But what is a community to do with a public figure who is neither criminal nor heroic, just ... unconventional? Even downright weird?

What if someone shows up in town who is a bit reckless and a few bricks shy of a load, but nevertheless is polite, fascinating and entertaining? When faced with such a person, what should good citizens do? This is the question that confronted Waco residents during the sweltering summer of 1897, when the antics of a man known as Professor Cannaday offered welcome relief from the heat.

J.C. Cannaday, who had lived in Waco about four years and claimed to have studied at Baylor University, attracted public attention that August when he set out to prove a great theory to the world. “Professor” Cannaday, as at least one newspaper referred to him, believed that the average man not only could use his mind to control and regulate all his bodily functions, but even could use his brain “to compel all nature to bend to the dictates of human will power.”

His theory: Once a man’s mind was “cultivated to its utmost capacity” and made as strong as God intended it to be, he could cause the elements — rain, snow, storms, heat and cold — to obey his every whim. Of course, it required “study and devotion” to produce a mind as powerful as this, a mind just like Professor Cannaday claimed to possess.

He also asserted there was biblical proof of his theory. Remember when Jesus Christ fasted 40 days and nights in the desert? Cannaday claimed that Jesus was merely providing the first real demonstration that the body could exist independently of nourishment.

To demonstrate that a disciplined mind could control both biology and nature, Cannaday announced that he would fast for 120 days. At the end of four months, he said, his body would remain in excellent health because his mind had willed it to do so.

When he was first interviewed by the Dallas Morning News on Aug. 24, Cannaday claimed to have eaten no food for 10 days. His diet during that time, he said, consisted solely of “artesian water and chewing tobacco.” To make sure that he wasn’t cheating, “friends” were supposedly watching him every minute. Doctors examined him periodically as an additional check.

To further illustrate the power of the mind, Cannaday went out walking each day along the blistering streets of Waco dressed in a silk top hat and heavy winter overcoat. Far from wilting in the heat, he claimed to be perfectly comfortable, not even drawing a bead of sweat.

By all accounts Professor Cannaday was charming and well-spoken, and as he left his boarding house each day to talk with reporters and curious acquaintances, his narrative just got better and better. He announced that he would soon up the ante in his battle against the flesh. After his fast had reached 30 days, Cannaday said he would not only continue to shun food, but also would quit drinking water and chewing tobacco. For the final 90 days, he proposed to ingest absolutely nothing at all except the air he breathed.

Cannaday was not a large man — he weighed just 120 pounds — and after 10 days of fasting, he seemed to be weakening a bit and losing weight. People were reported to have placed dishes of food in front of him to tempt him, but he resisted. Instead of eating, Cannaday occupied himself with talking about the ideal world that mankind would enjoy if only it would learn to harness the power of the mind.

As one reporter described this vision of a new world, “men and women, by exercising self-control, will live as they did in the golden age, when Saturn reigned. They will be kings of the earth, the air and the ocean. There will be no death, no sorrow, no sickness, no hunger. Everybody will be happy and everybody will be the ruler of himself. It will be a republic where each citizen is a prince.”

When it was pointed out that many of these new and improved humans would lose their jobs if people no longer had to buy food, clothing or shelter, Cannaday claimed the benefits would outweigh any losses.

“There will be broader opportunity for mankind under my regime,” he said. “Most of the present avocations of man will disappear. There will be no litigation, therefore no lawyers; no sickness, therefore no doctors; no burials, therefore no undertakers; no graves to dig, therefore no sextons; and no monuments, therefore no cemeteries. The world will be wiser, happier, less physical, more worthy and all the good will belong to man — living man, not ghosts.”

By Aug. 27, after he had gone almost two weeks without food, Cannaday’s weight had dropped to 100 pounds. His friends feared for his health, but he was more concerned with disproving various rumors making the rounds. One was that he was living on secret supplies of food hidden at his home. He invited skeptics to his boarding house to search his rooms, and they found nothing.

On the 16th day of the fast, Cannaday’s health was in such a perilous state that local doctors felt they must step in. They registered a charge of lunacy against him with McLennan County Judge J.N. Gallagher, who appointed a commission to evaluate the complaint. The commission concluded that Cannaday was indeed of unsound mind and needed to be restrained for his own good.

He was taken to the McLennan County Jail and placed under the care of Sheriff John W. Baker, who eventually convinced the protesting man to eat a bit of steak, toast and milk. His belly full, Cannaday went to sleep.

Even though he continued to protest being forced to give up his fast, by Sept. 1 he was regularly eating meals again. In fact, “some restraint was needed to prevent his eating too much as the tendency after one getting started was to eat everything in sight.”

After polishing off one meal of steak, beans and two quarts of buttermilk, Cannaday offered up a defense to a Dallas Morning News reporter.

“There is no man in Waco more rational than I am. The jury was in error in finding me demented, although I firmly believe it was done under the impression that my mind is astray,” Cannaday said. “I may never again attempt the experiment of fasting, but I claim that I have already demonstrated a great deal of my theory in having wholly abstained from nourishment for two weeks.”

Once his health was no longer in jeopardy, Cannaday was released from jail. Two weeks after he had first been imprisoned, one final news item appeared. It said that Cannaday was preparing to leave town on a speaking tour to discuss his theory and his famous fast.

And how did Cannaday’s physique come through the ordeal? Well, after the tiny theorist was force-fed a bit of reality in jail, he quickly gained 30 pounds. That prompted his friends to claim that the professor could match “any other champion in the eating of quail or anything else in the ordinary dietary order.”

Food for thought, indeed.

SOURCES: Dallas Morning News, Aug. 25-Sept. 14, 1897; Austin Daily Statesman, Sept. 1, 1897.