Hunger is no novelty. We can discount legends of golden ages, lands of Cockayne, and Megasthenes" statement that before Alexander"s invasion of India, there had never been famine or food shortage there. Trustworthy historical records show that during the Renaissance one year in ten in Britain, and one in five in Europe, was a famine year. China, with a greater area and more diverse climate, had a famine in some region every year.
Famine is a state of affairs in which people are dying in the streets. It therefore attracts the notice of historians and is recorded. The fact that it strikes people who are aware of having been properly fed and well is more important. Not only are the survivors more adjustable, they are also angry at the breakdown of the system and eager to do something about it though it is obvious from the record that they do not always have the means. Malnutrition is much more underhanded. It is a chronic state in which the total food supply or, more often, the supply of certain components such as protein or some of the vitamins, is inadequate. It seems probable that, either constantly or seasonally, it used to be the usual condition of mankind and was regarded as normal. The unhealthy appearance of the figures in medieval paintings and drawings is often put down to the incompetence of the artist: it is as likely that most people really did look like that. The plentifulness with which poets greeted the "merry month of May" may, in our dull climate, have had a climatic basis: it is just as likely that in May, after six months" shortage, there was now an adequate vitamin supply. The promptness with which some sailors died of scurvy after leaving port suggests that they were normally on the edge of scurvy and needed only a slight worsening of conditions to get it acutely. Others will think of other examples. Hunger and malnutrition are components of a classic example of a vicious circle. They lead to enfeeblement or unfeelingness in which nothing either can be done, or seems to be worth doing, to alter the state of affairs, this leads to more hunger and malnutrition. There is good reason to think that, in much of the developing world, if the circle could once be broken, it need never return.Famine is different from malnutrition because