Body Need May Exist Without Hunger
Still further evidence opposed to the theory that hunger results directly from the using up of organic stores is found in patients suffering from fever. Metabolism in fever patients is augmented, body substance is destroyed to such a degree that the weight of the patient may be greatly reduced, and yet the sensation of hunger under these conditions of increased need is wholly lacking.
Again, if a person is hungry and takes food, the sensation is suppressed soon afterwards, long before any considerable amount of nutriment 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 stimulation, and just as sleep, for example, can be abolished by bathing the temples, so hunger can be abolished by irritating the gastric walls.[16] This 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 argument, therefore, that the sensation arises directly from lack of nutriment in the body.