Britain's Princess Margaret was being drip-fed in hospital yesterday to restore her strength after days without eating properly, newspapers reported.
As the 70-year-old princess spent her second day at London's King Edward VII hospital, an old friend said she had been depressed after suffering a minor stroke - her second in three years - over the Christmas holiday.
Lady Glenconner, who had visited the princess at the royal family's Sandringham residence in eastern England on Sunday, said she had to be coaxed to eat a jam tart. "She was very frail and rather depressed about being so ill," Lady Glenconner told BBC television. Princess Margaret, younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, was admitted to hospital on Wednesday suffering from what Buckingham Palace described as a "severe loss of appetite".
There was no official update on Margaret's condition yesterday and little indication of the seriousness of her illness. Palace sources said the princess was not in the hospital's intensive care unit. But it was becoming clear that a lifetime of indulgence was taking its toll on her health.
The Daily Mail claimed nurses were feeding her nutrients via a tube through her nose after she had "virtually given up eating".
The Mirror quoted a royal source as saying the princess had not eaten properly for 15 days before being admitted to hospital and had become "painfully thin".
According to the Mail, Princess Margaret was having difficulty swallowing, a common side-effect of a stroke. It said nurses who had been caring for her at Sandringham had offered her high-energy drinks but she could not get them down.
"A stroke can affect people's ability to swallow and therefore make it more difficult for them to eat," said Ms Margaret Goose, chief executive of the Stroke Association, a research charity
"Loss of appetite can be directly due to the stroke itself or it may be a result of any number of other conditions," added Ms Goose.
Princess Margaret was renowned for her enthusiastic consumption of cigarettes and alcohol until illness curtailed her lifestyle. She had part of a lung removed in a cancer scare and suffered a minor stroke while on the Caribbean island of Mustique in 1998.