"In the terminal stages of starvation in man, signs and symptoms related to the gastro-intestinal tract are conspicuous features. These are copious and persistent diarrhoea with progressive dehydration and the other effects which follow from the inability to absorb-food and fluid. Observations made by medical men at an earlier period of the war on people in the extreme stages of starvation indicate that the onset of these symptoms almost invariably presages a fatal end, in spite of treatment. The source of this evidence I cannot reveal at present but' corroboration has come from China (Laycock, 1944) and from Bengal (Cuthbertson, 1944). Subsequent speakers will give their experience of starvation in liberated Europe. I confine myself to the physiological basis of the symptomatology and of the method of treatment by intravenous protein hydrolysates. Between 1927 and 1933 I had, with several colleagues, been studying in different animals the functions of the alimentary canal and particularly absorption by the small intestine. Absorption is fundamental to all the other nutritional processes; it is the 'bottle-neck and if it fails then all the other processes fail too. Failure of absorptionseems to me to be the essential lesion in starvation. The experimental evidence I quote points to progressive decline in the efficiency of absorption as the period of fasting is increased; the evidence also suggests that the metabolic processes also suffer."