But in America today what chance is there to starve if we understand what food is, for it grows all about us, and even in winter we could subsist on plain wheat grains, or other forms of grains, in good condition, a bushel of wheat serving to support a whole family most of a winter?

When men are lost in the woods for a week there is usually grave doubt expressed as to finding them alive, or miners trapped in the workings are believed to have little chance of rescue unless this reaches them before ten or twelve days, as the general impression prevails that one cannot live more than ten or twelve days without food.

It is the exaggeration of this fear that actually takes life before even ten days in not a few cases, and men lost in the woods are too often found in ten or twelve days dead, not from starvation but from fright.

At sea in an open boat, subjected to the heat of a tropical sun, the sweating and exhaustion from needed water to replace the losses from the sweating and evaporation of the body fluids, one is then in great danger, for we cannot dry up the body fluids without great danger, so these cases die from thirst, not hunger, for the body, if supplied with even a small amount of water, does not suffer from thirst, unless under intense heat, while living even many weeks without food.

Hunger at the end of the body's resources of fuel is a most compelling thing, and will get the thing desired if it can be gotten by any means whatever, and it is Nature's safeguard for the body to prevent the beginnings of starvation.

Real starvation cannot possibly set in so long as these body stores remain in even small degree, but death from accumulated toxins can occur much earlier than this.

The writer when fasting and at the same time continuing his usual activities, as he always does, has frequently been amused by the tale of some panhandler who requested the price of a meal, saying he had had nothing to eat for two days.

When handed a little sympathy and the statement that the writer and supposed donor had not eaten for perhaps two weeks, he of course considered this nothing but a stall, and went away grumbling over the lack of generosity and sympathy from some one evidently in better circumstances than himself.

If many of these bums were allowed to lose themselves in the woods it would cure them of their habit of peregrination and teach them to settle down to work, for they would get a new view of life, if once allowed to become really hungry.

Appetite is merely a stage in adaptation of the body to the use of its own stores of fuel; hunger is the finale.

Appetite with its disagreeable sensations is almost universal; hunger almost unknown.

Appetite is felt as a gnawing sensation in the stomach; hunger is felt nowhere in particular, but is an anticipation of eating only, and in its milder forms is confined to some one article that is most desired at the time.

Appetite makes a man into a bear; hunger into a man.

Appetite is created from habit; hunger is physiological.

During the writer's earlier experience with sanatorium treatment of the down-and-out chronic, it was his custom to begin this with a fast of two weeks, using nothing but water, or at the most a very small amount of fruit juices daily.

Diet was begun on the third week after admission, and the reaction of the various types of patient and disease to this plan showed every degree of appetite possible to imagine.

This was at first so disagreeable that he early adopted the plan of deep saline purgation to tide over the first three days and hurry the body in adapting itself to the internal feeding, the feeding on its own stored fuels, and usually at the end of the three-day period there was an almost complete distinterest developed toward all thoughts of food.

An occasional case showed flashes of appetite for a week, seldom longer, and it was always a question if this was not a purely psychic appetite, the result of this same old atavistic fear of starvation.

After a few days there was a peculiar feeling of uplift that drove many to break forth in poetic effusions for the first time in their lives, some really clever screeds developing from what seemed very commonplace equipment.

These patients would go comfortably to the end of the two weeks and submit to the breaking of the fast without suggestion of any kind as to what was to be eaten, as no desires had pointed to anything in particular.

Among these were often desperate cases whose chance of continued life depended on a much more thorough and complete detoxication, and who fasted to the physiologic end, till hunger again developed, and in every such case there was a distinct desire for some one article of food, and nothing else would do.

This desire of normal hunger was always respected, and the thing craved was given in very small amount, and not infrequently this was the last desire expressed; the craving of true hunger had been satisfied and the body was then ready for any good food, and always these cases expressed themselves as never before having experienced such keen enjoyment in eating in their whole lives, and all declared the simple soups, the salads, the fruits, the best they had ever tasted.

All worshipped the genius of a cook that could develop such tastes in food, and yet the cook had nothing to do with it, the patient's own appreciation of the taste of food furnishing the art that was only in the seeming.

Probably not one in fifty of the cases treated was ever put through the complete fast, the rest having developed sufficient cleanliness of tissues as permitted a return to normal eating at the end of the first two weeks, but even these cases, after the cleansed body returned to dependence on the foods eaten daily instead of on its own stores, developed an appreciation of the flavors of foods that they were keen to keep afterward as the best sauce for foods of all kinds.

After all, hunger is the very best sauce, and when we think that the average man or woman goes through life without this sauce, depending on condiments to add flavor to his or her foods, we begin to realise what the average person is missing of the real joys of the table.

Appetite is a deceitful jade at best, being wholly unnatural and unreliable, leading us into many mistakes, and not till hunger has been uncovered, as by a fast or abstaining from food habits for some time, does she ever have an opportunity to show what she can do in the way of adding to the enjoyments of the table.

Epicurus allowed himself to become hungry; the king did not, so Epicurus could say that he was happier with his barley cake than was the king with his stalled ox.

He actually got keener enjoyment of taste out of the simple cake than could the jaded palate of the king out of his meats seasoned with various appetising tastes added by his chef to make this dish more pleasing to the king.

And now comes a celebrated French chef advocating the injection into the veins of the slain animal of various intrasauces to change the flavor of the meat.

Stimulants to appetite are considered quite the thing, and the ingenious chef who can add strange flavors to surprise the sense of taste is the successful one who can command a large salary from the jaded palates of his customers.

People are robbing themselves continually of the very essence of table pleasures when they are depending on appetite without allowing hunger to direct the needs of the body.

If we were to pass up one meal a day for a time, we might then really need food by the next meal time, but carrying this further, to the passing up of two meals a day, we could then be reasonably sure of real need, and could enjoy food as never before.

It is the victim of appetite who roars over a steak that is not done or not seasoned to his individual taste, never the hungry man.

It is the victim of appetite who says he cannot eat fruits or salads because they distress him.

He has lost his ability to digest or even enjoy the choicest foods through perversion of his habits in eating, and only by fasting or greatly reducing his intake can he come to any real appreciation of the simple plain flavors of unadorned natural foods in their natural form and flavor.

The science of cookery has perverted this sense of taste, and it is often remarked that, from the standpoint of physiologic living, a man's worst enemy is his wife.

Trainers of animals who wish them to perform always allow them to become hungry first.

Dog trainers who wish a good day's hunting over a keen dog never feed him till after his day's work is finished.

The writer knew quite intimately several years ago a dog breaker who was always said to know more about a dog than any other man, and who said he had proved to himself that it was true that a good dog with a full stomach was no good on the scent or the trail, by taking two equally good workers, feeding one and refraining from feeding the other, taking them to the woods and putting them to work.

Always the dog without food in his stomach was keen in the chase, he passed over no points or tracks, stood faithfully on the point until he was told to go in, while the other dog, whose stomach was working on a mess of meat, was careless, missed points, ran over birds, flushed many out of cover that he did not know were there, and was careless in obeying commands to go in or stop.

Next day he used the same dogs, but switched them, feeding the dog that had before fasted, and fasting the one that had been fed the day before, and the result always switched with the dogs, the keen dog was always the one not fed while the careless and inefficient dog was the one that was digesting food when he began to work.

The reason is plain, especially as the dog depends on his sense of smell and cannot use this effectively unless he is able to breathe through his nose, and dogs depend on panting for the evaporation during exercise that we men get through perspiration. The dog fasting did not need the evaporation as his internal works were at rest, while the dog who was digesting food had to run with his mouth open, lolling his long tongue in the breeze to ease the rising heat of exercise, so could not get scents till too late, flushing his birds instead of scenting them at a distance.

Another surprising thing to him was the fact that the tired dog at the end of the day's hunt was always the dog that had been fed, while the fasting dog was always still fresh and eager for a longer hunt.

This led him to the fixed practice of feeding but once a day, and always at the end of the day, and led further to his complete freedom, in his large kennels, from distemper when others were losing dogs almost every year from this cause.

So the old Roman or Greek habit of feeding only at the end Of the day was not half bad.