Hunger the Result of Contractions
There remain to be considered, as a possible cause of hunger pangs, contractions of the stomach and other parts of the alimentary canal. This suggestion is not new. Sixty-nine years ago Weber[25] declared his belief that “strong contraction of the muscle fibres of the wholly empty stomach, whereby its cavity disappears, makes a part of the sensation which we call hunger.” Vierordt[26] drew the same inference twenty-five years later (in 1871), and since then Ewald, Knapp, and Hertz have declared their adherence to this view. These writers have not brought forward any direct evidence for their conclusion, though Hertz has cited Boldireff’s observations on fasting dogs as probably accounting for what he terms “the gastric constituent of the sensation.”