White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1930-06-20
Why We Behave
Like Human Beings
b GEORGE DORSEY. pb. D., LID.
Children of the Emotions

IN A Carnegie laboratory a man
weighing 1874 pounds began a test
fast. With no food. but plenty of dis
titled water, he lost % pounds in
month. He lost some muscular
strength, but gained in sharpness of
senses and ability to learn new tricks.
The first three days of fast are
the hardest. Suffering thereafter is
imaginary, due to fear or panic. "Vol-
untary starvation is in no sense he
roic act"; the "exalted" feelings.
signs and sounds reported by fasting
ascetics are pure hallucination, thinks
Carlson. Their brains are not more
active, but less: they dream! Starva-
ton changes the nature of the blood
and the tissue of the brain. Halluci-
nations are children of the emotions
rather than of the brain.
If the baby does not like its first
meal, it will refuse it, as chick does
a bitter worm. Man is born with
sucking reflex and hunger mechanism;
his appetite begins to be conditioned
with his first meal. We do not in
herit thirst for milk or beer, or
craving for pickles or alcohol.
All eat to live and some live to eat.
We inherit hunger complex; we ac-
quire complex appetite. Both hum
ger and appetite furnish their quota
to prisons, but succeed fairly well in
keeping out Of the insane asylum. Hun
ger fills alms-houses, appetite supplies
hospitals. The complete appetite has
become an important factor in human
culture and has even shaped the des-
TIMES" of some nations.
He is a "born hog" He may de-
serve the epithet, but there are no
Suinae in mans ancestors. Human
hogs are made, not born. Greed is
not part of our inheritance, nor to
the stuff we are made of has it BIZ
ologic value
Food has biologic value. We are
born with a hunger complex and of
parents who know it by our behavior
when that complex begins to act. Their
reaction brings us in contact with food.
That contact-physical and chemical
releases the sucking reflex, which con-
tinues until the stomach signals
"Stop." The hunger complex salts
fed, we are not hungry. The hunger
mechanism retires and the infant can
give it's mind to other matters. Or,
as we say, we can now get down to
business!
That business" may be big" but
it ends with, Where shall we eat?
Later, what shall we eat? These ques-
lions are big business to millions of
people-among the important prob
lens Of life.''
How are they solved? In relation
to the hunger complex and the body's
requirements? Or in reference to a
complex appetite which ranges from
soup to nuts and includes corned beef
and cabbage on Monday, fish on Fri
day, brown bread and beans on Sat
urday, and gorge on Sundays, holt
days, weddings and wakes?
The hunger complex Is biologic
necessity and begins with a mech
anism of special receptors in mouth
and nose by which we distinguish nox-
lous physical and chemical stimuli.
We may turn up our nose at many
things, but certain things make us hold
our nose. The bacteria of decay are
enormously important in the nitrogen
cycle, but we prefer our ammonia in
smelling. salts. Nor is it without BIZ
illogical significance that our taste for
bitter is thousands of times more
acute than for sweet.
We get hungry for" this or that.
What is back of that particular hun
ger? What is it that makes our mouth
water? The newborn has never tasted
food, good or bad: how does it know
that it tastes good or bad. 1t must
learn. It does learn; by, the same
process that life itself learns-by try
Ing.
The first meal was the answer to the
hunger complex. The "set" Of that
meal was the conditioning factor in
the next one: did 1t taste like more?"
If 1t did, the foundation was laid for
an appetite for that kind of food. By
and by the child is weaned: other ap.
petites are built in by the same tastes
like-more process.
So we come to like this and that,
and this and that kind of cooking, sur
roundings etc.
We all eat our "peck of dirt" How
about dirt eaters? There are, especial
" children with abnormal appetites
for clay, chalk, lead pencil, etc. Chill
dren experiment; If no harm comes
and they like the taste, they keep 1t
up. Same way with pickles, mustard,
pepper. gum, licorice, tobacco. Wheth-
er an appetite is "depraved" or mere
" abnormal depends largely on taste,
and taste depends on habit, custom,
social usage. Caterpillars, snakes
dogs, overripe cheese, sharks fms
"gamy" game, snails, frogs, toads, liz.
ards, monkeys, grasshoppers, grubs,
dogfish, brains, tripe, birds nests, dew
ilfish, blood: all favorite dishes-some
where, some time. Each man to his
own.
Man must eat: it is his nature.
When, where, what depend on his nur-
ture. Hunger;is the best sauce. And
the best hunger producer is chopping
wood. After that come all other forms
of physical work. The body we in.
herit was built up by work, its func.
tioning apparatus is arranged for work
| WHOM vo do MT work orr hoflv rnuSt