Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : $b an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitementCannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford)
Science
Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : $b an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement
Cannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford)
Emotions; Mental health; Mind and body
The increase of blood sugar, the secretion of adrenin, and the
altered circulation in pain and emotional excitement have been
interpreted in the foregoing discussion as biological adaptations
to conditions in wild life which are likely to involve pain and
emotional excitement, i. e., the necessities of fighting or flight.
The more rapid clotting of blood under these same circumstances may
also be regarded as an adaptive process, useful to the organism.
The importance of conserving the blood, especially in the struggles
of mortal combat, needs no argument. The effect of local injury
in favoring the formation of a clot to seal the opened vessels is
obviously adaptive in protecting the organism against hemorrhage.
The injury that causes opening of blood vessels, however, is, if
extensive, likely also to produce pain. And, as already shown,
conditions producing pain increase adrenal secretion and hasten
coagulation. Thus injury would be made less dangerous as an occasion
for serious hemorrhage by two effects which the injury itself
produces in the body--the local effect on clotting at the region
of injury and the general effect on the speed of clotting wrought
by reflex secretion of adrenin.
According to the argument here presented the strong emotions, as
fear and anger, are rightly interpreted as the concomitants of
bodily changes which may be of utmost service in subsequent action.
These bodily changes are so much like those which occur in pain
and fierce struggle that, as early writers on evolution suggested,
the emotions may be considered as foreshadowing the suffering and
intensity of actual strife. On this general basis, therefore, the
bodily alterations attending violent emotional states would, as
organic preparations for fighting and possible injury, naturally
involve the effects which pain itself would produce. And increased
blood sugar, increased adrenin, an adapted circulation and rapid
clotting would all be favorable to the preservation of the organism
that could best produce them.
REFERENCES
[Footnote 116: See Darwin: Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,
New York, 1905, pp. 101, 117.]
[Footnote 117: Spencer: Principles of Psychology, London, 1855.]
[Footnote 118: McDougall: Introduction to Social Psychology, London,
1908, pp. 49, 59.]
[Footnote 119: Crile: Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1910,
clxiii, p. 893.]
[Footnote 120: Macleod: Diabetes, etc., p. 80.]
[Footnote 121: Darwin: _Loc. cit._, p. 72.]
[Footnote 122: Nasse: Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie, 1869,
ii, p. 106; 1877, xiv, p. 483.]
[Footnote 123: Frentzel: Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie, 1894,
lvi, p. 280.]
[Footnote 124: Zuntz: Oppenheimer’s Handbuch der Biochemie, Jena,
1911, iv (first half), p. 841.]
[Footnote 125: Benedict and Cathcart: Muscular Work, a Metabolic
Study, Washington, 1913, pp. 85-87.]
[Footnote 126: Chauveau and Kaufmann: Comptes Rendus, Académie des
Sciences, 1886, ciii, p. 1062.]
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