EFFECT OF MORPHINE ON THE SUBJECTIVE RESPONSE OF HUNGER IN NORMAL SUBJECTS

¹ The Anesthesia Laboratory of the Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts

Eighty-five nonaddict, nonpatient, adult male college and graduate students received the "standard" clinical dose of 10 mg of morphine phosphate per 70 kg of body weight and 1 ml of saline subcutaneously. The several conditions under which medications were given and the methods of obtaining and evaluating various types of subjective hunger response and one type of objective hunger response have been discussed.

It is concluded that, in comparison with a placebo, morphine does not reduce the hunger responses studied in the majority of nonpatient, nonaddict subjects and that although it produces a statistically significant group effect in a large sample of subjects (n = 85), this effect is weak in comparison with other subjective responses produced by morphine.