Hungry Men

Hunger and starvation have stricken every part of the earth at one time or another. Yet despite the tragic abundance of source material, medical science does not know very much about what happens in the human body when it runs short of food. Still less is known about what happens to the mind. Last week, researchers gathered at the University of Minnesota to celebrate the completion of a monumental work, The Biology of Human Starvation (University of Minnesota, 2 vols.; $25). The book satisfies some of man's hunger for knowledge about his hungering body and suggests ways to glean more nourishing facts.

Many popular ideas about hunger are questioned or exploded by Dr. Ancel Keys and his co-authors.* Examples:

P: Women are supposed to have a greater proportion of body fat than men, but available data do not confirm any difference, let alone measure it.

P: Degrees of starvation cannot be measured by loss of weight. As the body burns up its own stored fat it begins to store water instead, causing edema (waterlogged swelling), so that starving people may have chubby faces.

P: Hunger is not necessarily a sensation caused by contractions of the empty stomach. Such pangs usually disappear during acute starvation; they are severe in semi-starvation, but may actually be worse when refeeding has begun. Men whose stomachs have been removed still feel hunger. Another word than "hunger" is needed to describe the drive for food.

Riot & Rebellion. Since famine may strike a particular social class in the midst of plenty, why is it that starving people do not rebel and simply seize food? Dr. Keys and his team of researcher-writers explain in reply: "Riot and rebellion are engendered by minor hunger and deprivation, but real starvation makes for relative tractability. Though moral and social standards may be lost, lethargy and weakness are powerful deterrents against strong action."

In the extremity of his suffering, starving man has tried to fill his empty belly with water, snow, wood, bark, leather, clay and even manure. Often these drastic fillers are tried when human flesh is available. "There are few acts so basically revolting as cannibalism," say Dr. Keys and his associates. "However, to eat the bodies of the dead may not seem an unreasonable last resort to save the living. Surprisingly, the practice is never very common."

The best-known cases of U.S. cannibalism happened in the Donner Party of settlers from Illinois, who were marooned in the Sierra Nevada on their way to California in 1846. These people, say the authors, were "fairly ordinary folk, inexperienced in the ways of explorers but courageous and resourceful . . . [though] lacking effective leadership." Virtually all the groups into which the party split up practiced cannibalism. "Mr. and Mrs. Breen, left in ... camp with five children of their own and four others, turned to the unburied dead to save those who were still living ... At the main camp . . . only one adult remained alive. He had sustained life by cannibalism and was suspected of having murdered the two remaining women."

For the Children. The tragedy of the Donner Party, say Dr. Keys and fellow authors, "is notable for the extent of recourse to cannibalism." They offer these tentative explanations: "Group discipline was practically nonexistent, the bodies of the dead were preserved at hand by the cold, and compunctions are easily overcome in the face of the needs of one's children."

Geography is no bar to cannibalism, but racial habits seem to be. "Among Orientals," say the authors, "where vast numbers are so often reduced to the extremity of want . . . cases of cannibalism are so few as to excite wonder." The explanation, they think, may lie in the power of religion. "In the Orient, the concept of the complete dissociation of body and soul is less fixed than in the Western world."

Much of the clinical material in The Biology of Human Starvation was gathered in the famous wartime Minnesota Experiment on semi-starvation, for which 36 conscientious objectors served as guinea pigs (TIME, March 29, 1948). Last week, 10 of the conscientious guinea pigs, recovered from their voluntary hardships, sat down to a formal dinner in Minneapolis with Dr. Keys and the other experimenters to celebrate the book's completion. They ate steak and potatoes.

* Drs. Josef Brozek, Austin Henschel, Olaf Mickelsen and Henry Longstreet Taylor, assisted by Dr. Ernst Simonson, Mrs. Angie Sturgeon Skinner and Dr. Samuel M. Wells.

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