These facts are of fundamental importance in the serving of food, especially when, through illness, the appetite is fickle. The degree of daintiness with which nourishment is served, the little attentions to esthetic details--the arrangement of the dishes, the small portions of food, the flower beside the plate--all may help to render food pleasing to the eye and savory to the nostrils and may be the deciding factors in determining whether the restoration of strength is to begin or not. Emotions Unfavorable to the Normal Secretion of the Digestive Juices The conditions favorable to proper digestion are wholly abolished when unpleasant feelings such as vexation and worry and anxiety, or great emotions such as anger and fear, are allowed to prevail. This fact, so far as the salivary secretion is concerned, has long been known. The dry mouth of the anxious person called upon to speak in public is a common instance; and the “ordeal of rice,” as employed in India, was a practical utilization of the knowledge that excitement is capable of inhibiting the salivary flow. When several persons were suspected of crime, the consecrated rice was given to them all to chew, and after a short time it was spit out upon the leaf of the sacred fig tree. If anyone ejected it dry, that was taken as proof that fear of being discovered had stopped the secretion, and consequently he was adjudged guilty.[5] What has long been recognized as true of the secretion of saliva has been proved true also of the secretion of gastric juice. For example, Hornborg was unable to confirm in his little patient with a gastric fistula the observation by Pawlow that when hunger is present the mere seeing of food results in a flow of gastric juice. Hornborg explained the difference between his and Pawlow’s results by the different ways in which the boy and the dogs faced the situation. When food was shown, but withheld, the hungry dogs were all eagerness to secure it, and the juice very soon began to flow. The boy, on the contrary, became vexed when he could not eat at once, and began to cry; then no secretion appeared. Bogen also has reported the instance of a child with closed esophagus and gastric fistula, who sometimes fell into such a passion in consequence of vain hoping for food that the giving of the food, after the child was calmed, was not followed by any flow of the secretion.