Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/75

 HUNGER HUNS 67 HUNGER, the sensation by which the neces- sity for food is made known to the system, re- ferred to the stomach, but indicating the wants of the system at large ; impelling us to supply the waste of the tissues consequent on all vital acts, and in proportion to the activity of the animal functions from exercise, &c. If the desire cannot be gratified, or if absent from disease, the phenomena of inanition or of star- vation are induced, with a diminution of the bulk of nearly all the tissues and proportionate weakness. Hunger is greatest in the young and growing state, and least in old age, when the vital operations aro deficient in activity. It varies with the amount of heat to be gen- erated in tho body ; external cold increases hunger, while heat diminishes it; hence the voracious appetite of tho arctic regions, and the general use of stimulating condiments in the tropics ; it is also increased by any unusual drain upon tho system, when accompanied by febrile action, as in lactation and diabetes, in the last of which especially hunger is almost insatiable. In health, the feeling of hunger is a very good indication of the demands of the system for food, and it becomes the stimu- lant to mental operations, automatic in infancy, but directed by intelligence in the adult, which have for their object the gratification of the desire. Hunger depends rather upon the de- mand of the system for aliment than upon the state of emptiness of the stomach. The sense of hunger may be, however, immediately de- pendent on some condition of the stomach ; it is well known that the swallowing of indiges- tible and non-nutritious substances will tem- porarily relieve it. The demands of the stom- ach and of the general system in this respect are probably communicated to the sensorium by the pneumogastric nerves and by the sym- pathetic. On the other hand, mere emptiness of the stomach does not produce hunger, as is evident from the fact that an ample supply of food passes entirely from the stomach hours before this sensation is felt, and that in disease there may be no desire for food for many days with total abstinence from it. Moreover, hun- ger may be relieved by the injection of alimen- tary fluids into the large intestine, when the stomach cannot receive or retain food. Hl'SS (Lat. Hunni), a people of northern Asia who in the 5th century invaded and con- quered a great part of Europe. Of their ori- gin little is known with certainty. Under the name of Chuni they were known to the Greeks, and aro mentioned by Ptolemy as early as the 2d century. According to the theory of De Guignes in his Hittoire des Huns, the Huns were a Tartar nation, tho Hiung-nu, whose original country was the region immediately north of tho great wall of China, which was built to protect that empire against their in- cursions. For several ages they carried on successful wars against the Chinese emperors, who were compelled to pay them tribute in order to purchase a precarious peace. Their power was at length broken by the arms of the emperor Vouti and by their own dissen- sions, and in the first century of the Christian era the unconquered remnant of the nation abandoned their country and marched west- ward in search of a new home. One division established themselves on the E. side of the Caspian sea, where they became known as White Huns. The main body of the nation established themselves for a while in Russia on the banks of the Volga. In the 3d century they crossed this river and invaded the terri- tory of the Alans, whom they conquered and amalgamated with themselves. The united na- tions pressed onward, and attacked the Goths in 375. The Goths were defeated, their king Ermanric put to death, and the Gothic nation' driven to seek an asylum within the bounds of tho Roman empire. The Huns established themselves on the banks of the Don and the Dnieper and in Pannonia. They soon became involved in war with the Romans, and in the 5th century under the leadership of Attila attained to a high degree of power and empire. (See ATTILA.) Their dominion fell to pieces after the death of Attila (about 453), and the peo- ple themselves were lost and swallowed up in fresh invasions of barbarians from the north and east. The Huns of the Byzantine authors included many distinct tribes which invaded Eu- rope in successive waves, including the Avars. Howorth identifies the Hunnic Avars with the louan-Iouan, who appear in Chinese history in the beginning of the 3d century A. D. Some time later they are found on the Jaxartes, and invading Transoxiana, where they intermarried with the Yethas or Ephtalitaj. They compelled these latter to emigrate to the south of the Oxus, and during the 4th and 5th centuries extended their power as far as India. The whole frontier of eastern Persia is then de- scribed by western writers as infested by ene- mies, to whom the name of White Huns is given. Cosmas Indicopleustes, who was in In- dia about 525, gives the name of Hunnia to the vast territory separating India from China. Thus, while Europe and the west were flood- ed by one wave of Huns, eastern Persia and the Indian border were flooded by another. Howorth has also attempted to prove that the Khazars or Akatzirs were the same race as the Ephtalitffi of the Persian frontier. According to some writers, the Huns were a tribe of Fin- nish stock, and the ancestors of tho Hungari- ans or Magyars. They are described by the Roman writers as hideous in appearance, with broad shoulders, flat noses, and small black eyes, deeply buried in the head. " A fabulous origin was assigned to them," says Gibbon, " worthy of their form and manners ; that the witches of Scythia, who for their foul and deadly practices had been driven from socie- ty, had copulated in the desert with infernal spirits ; and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction. Tho tale was greedily embraced by tho credulous terror of