THE NATURE OF HUNGER 297 



pressed soon afterwards, long before any considerable amount of nutri- 

 ment could be digested and absorbed, and therefore long before the 

 blood and the general bodily condition, if previously altered, could be 

 restored to normal. 



Furthermore, persons exposed to privation have testified that hunger 

 can be temporarily suppressed by swallowing indigestible materials. 

 Certainly scraps of leather and bits of moss, not to mention clay eaten 

 by the Otomacs, would not materially compensate for large organic 

 losses. In rebuttal to this argument the comment has been made that 

 central states as a rule can be readily overwhelmed by peripheral stim- 

 ulation, and just as sleep, for example, can be abolished by bathing the 

 temples, so hunger can be abolished by irritating the gastric walls. 17 

 That comment is beside the point, for it meets the issue by merely 

 assuming as true the condition under discussion. The absence of 

 hunger during the ravages of fever, and its quick abolition after food 

 or even indigestible stuff is swallowed, still further weakens the argu- 

 ment, therefore, that the sensation arises directly from lack of nutri- 

 ment in the body. 



The Theory that Hunger is of General Origin does not Explain the 

 Quick Onset and the Periodicity of the Sensation. — Many persons have 

 noted that hunger has a sharp onset. A person may be tramping in the 

 woods or working in the fields, where fixed attention is not demanded, 

 and without premonition may feel the abrupt arrival of the character- 

 istic ache. The expression " grub-struck " is a picturesque description 

 of this experience. If this sudden arrival of the sensation corresponds 

 to the general bodily state, the change in the general bodily state must 

 occur with like suddenness or have a critical point at which the sensa- 

 tion is instantly precipitated. There is no evidence whatever that 

 either of these conditions occurs in the course of metabolism. 



Another peculiarity of hunger, which I have noticed in my own 

 person, is its intermittancy. It may come and go several times in the 

 course of a few hours. Furthermore, while the sensation is prevailing, 

 its intensity is not uniform, but marked by ups and downs. In some 

 instances the ups and downs change to a periodic presence and absence 

 without change of rate. In making the above statements I do not de- 

 pend on my own introspection alone; psychologists trained in this 

 method of observation have reported that in their experience the tem- 

 poral course of the sensation is distinctly intermittent. 18 In my own 

 experience the hunger pangs came and went on one occasion as follows : 



17 See Schiff, loc. cit., p. 49. 



18 1 am indebted to Professor J. W. Baird, of Clark University, and his 

 collaborators, for this corroborative testimony. 



