298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and so on, for ten minutes longer. Again in this relation, the inter- 

 mittent and periodic character of hunger would require, on the theory 

 under examination, that the bodily supplies be intermittently and 

 periodically insufficient. During one moment the absence of hunger 

 would imply an abundance of nutriment in the organism, ten seconds 

 later the presence of hunger would imply that the stores had been 

 suddenly reduced, ten seconds later still the absence of hunger would 

 imply a sudden renewal of plenty. Such zig-zag shifts of the general 

 bodily state may not be impossible, but from all that is known of the 

 course of metabolism, such quick changes are highly improbable. The 

 periodicity of hunger, therefore, is further evidence against the theory 

 that the sensation has a general basis in the body. 



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

 Local Reference. — The last objection to this theory is that it does not 

 account for the most common feature of hunger — namely, the reference 

 of the sensation to the region of the stomach. Schifi and others who 

 have supported the theory 19 have met this objection by two contentions. 

 First they have pointed out that the sensation is not always referred to 

 the stomach. Schiff interrogated ignorant soldiers regarding the local 

 reference ; several indicated the neck or chest, twenty-three the sternum, 

 four were uncertain of any region, and two only designated the stomach. 

 In other words, the stomach region was most rarely mentioned. 



The second contention against the importance of local reference is 

 that such evidence is fallacious. An armless man may feel tinglings 

 which seem to arise in fingers which have long since ceased to be a 

 portion of his body. The fact that he experiences such tinglings and 

 ascribes them to dissevered parts, does not prove that the sensation 

 originates in those parts. And similarly the assignment of the ache of 

 hunger to any special region of the body does not demonstrate that the 

 ache arises from that region. Such are the arguments against a local 

 origin of hunger. 



Concerning these arguments we may recall, first, Schiff s admission 

 that the soldiers he questioned were too few to give conclusive evidence. 

 Further, the testimony of most of them that hunger seemed to originate 

 in the chest or region of the sternum can not be claimed as unfavorable 

 to a peripheral source of the sensation. The description of feelings 

 which develop from disturbances within the body is almost always 

 indefinite. As Head and others have shown, conditions in a viscus 

 which give rise to sensation are likely not to be attributed to the viscus, 



19 See Schiff, loc. cit., p. 31 ; Bardier, loc. cit., p. 16. 



