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
[Illustration: Figure 9.--Intestinal muscle beating in normal
vena cava blood, removed at 1 and renewed at 2. At 3 normal blood
removed. At 4 contraction inhibited by vena cava blood drawn
after sensory stimulation; at 5 removed. At 6 Ringer’s solution
substituted.]
Confirmation of Our Results by Other Observers
The foregoing experiments and conclusions were reported in 1911.
In 1912, Elliott[45] brought confirmatory evidence by use of a
method quite different from ours. As previously stated, he studied
the effects of experimental procedures on adrenal secretion by a
careful comparative quantitative assay of the adrenin content of the
glands when one gland was isolated from the central nervous system
and the other left connected. He took advantage of the action of
morphia and of the substance Β-tetrahydronaphthylamine in evoking
in cats all the appearances of great fright. After the animals
had thus been “frightened,” he found that the adrenal gland which
was still connected with the spinal cord was much depleted of its
adrenin content compared with the other, isolated gland. And he
observed, further, that animals newly brought to the laboratory,
and evidently disturbed by the strangeness of their surroundings,
had a considerably smaller amount of adrenin in their glands than
other animals grown accustomed to the situation. Elliott also
observed that prolonged excitation of a sensory nerve, such as the
great sciatic, may cause the adrenin largely to disappear from the
gland still connected with the central nervous system and subjected,
therefore, to reflex influences.
Our conclusions have also been confirmed more recently (1913) by
Hitchings, Sloan and Austin,[46] working in Crile’s laboratory in
Cleveland. They used the same method which we had used to obtain
blood and to test for adrenin, and found that after great fear and
rage had been induced in a cat by the attempt of a muzzled dog to
fight it, the adrenin reaction was clearly demonstrable. And just
as we had noted that the reaction did not occur if the adrenal
glands had been removed, they showed that it did not occur if the
nervous connections with the spinal cord were previously severed.
The logic of all these experiments may be briefly summed up. That
the adrenal glands are subject to splanchnic influence has been
demonstrated anatomically and by the physiological effects of their
secretion after artificial stimulation of the splanchnic nerves.
Impulses are normally sent along these nerves, in the natural
conditions of life, when animals become greatly excited, as in
fear and rage and pain. There is every probability, therefore, that
these glands are stimulated to extra secretion at such times. Both
by an exceedingly delicate biological test (intestinal muscle) and
by an examination of the glands themselves, clear evidence has been
secured that in pain and deep emotion the glands do, in fact, pour
out an excess of adrenin into the circulating blood.
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