History records that mankind has suffered at intervals from great famines. As recently as 1943, at least a million people died of famine in Bengal. In January 1943, a lot of soldiers of the Royal Hungarian Army died in Russia, at the River Don, because of the lack of food supply and insufficient healthcare. The enormous advances of science in this century have made the prevention and relief of famine technically easier. Subsequently, in many parts of the world, famine conditions have arisen, but fortunately on a smaller scale. In this work an attempt is made to set out a few general principles of famine.