Unlike many other rhythmically repeated sensations, hunger is not one that anybody becomes accustomed to and neglects because of its monotony. During the period of his confinement in the citadel of Magdeburg, the celebrated political adventurer Baron von Trenck[216] was allowed only a pound and a half of ammunition bread and a jug of water as his daily ration. “It is impossible for me to describe to my reader,” he wrote in his memoirs, “the excess of tortures that during eleven months I endured from ravenous hunger. I could easily have devoured six pounds of bread every day; and every twenty-four hours, after having received and swallowed my small portion, I continued as hungry as before I began, yet I was obliged to wait another twenty-four hours for a new morsel.... My tortures prevented sleep, and looking into futurity, the cruelty of my fate seemed to me, if possible, to increase, for I imagined that the prolongation of pangs like these was insupportable. God preserve every honest man from sufferings like mine! They were not to be endured by the most obdurate villain. Many have fasted three days, many have suffered want for a week or more, but certainly no one besides myself ever endured it in the same excess for eleven months; some have supposed that to eat little might become habitual, but I have experienced the contrary. My hunger increased every day, and of all the trials of fortitude my whole life has afforded, this eleven months was the most bitter.”[*] *[Footnote: In all probability the continued experience of hunger pangs reported by Baron von Trenck was due to the repeated eating of amounts of food too small to satisfy the bodily demand. The reader will recall that persons who for some time take no food whatever report that the disagreeable feelings are less intense or disappear after the third or fourth day (see p. 238).] Thus, although the taking of food may be set in abeyance at times of great excitement, and the bodily reserves fully mobilized, that phase of the organism’s self-protecting adjustment is limited, and then hunger asserts itself as an agency imperiously demanding restoration of the depleted stores. The Similarity of Visceral Effects in Different Strong Emotions and Suggestions as to its Psychological Significance