The active controversy concerning the sensibility of the visceral organs that has been going on since the time of Haller is essentially a question to what extent afferent nervous impulses from the viscera influence conscious processes. Haller thought the visceral organs were insensitive, especially to pain. Afferent or sensory nerve-fibers are distributed to all the internal organs. But'the stimulation of these nerves may produce local reflexes only, or central reflexes of subconscious character (tonus, vascular, respiratory, etc.). Lennander, a surgeon, observing numerous patients in abdominal operations, under local anesthesia for the abdominal wall, reached the conclusion that, excepting the parietal peritoneum, the entire viscera (stomach included) is insensitive, especially to pain. If Lennander's view is correct the hunger pains cannot be of gastric origin. We presume Lennander would ascribe them to mechanical tension or pressure on the parietal peritoneum from the strong contractions of the empty stoipach. Lennander's assistant, Nystrom, and MacKenzie, Becher, and Mitchell have accepted and attempted still further to substantiate and defend this radical theory. But other workers have shown that it is untenable. Kast and Meltzer obtained distinct evidence of pain on injury or strong stimulation of the viscera, and showed, moreover, that local anesthetics (subcutaneous injection of cocaine) tend to depress visceral sensibility. Kast and Meltzer, and Ritter suggest that this accounts for Lennander's erroneous conclusion, as local anesthesia was used in practically all his patients. New experimental facts as well as critical considerations demonstrating certain sensibilities of all the visceral organs have also been published by Neumann, Hertz, Head, Rivers and Sherran, Boring, and others. But in the present work we are concerned with the sensibility of the alimentary canal, and especially that of the stomach.