Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement / by Walter B. Cannon.

  • Cannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford), 1871-1945.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement / by Walter B. Cannon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    conduct was determined by a calculated search for pleasure and avoidance of pain or they ascribed it to a vague and undefined faculty named the conscience or the moral sense. Comparative study of the be¬ havior of men and of lower animals under various cir¬ cumstances, however, especially with the purpose of learning the source of prevailing impulses, is revealing the inadequacy of the theories of the older psycholo¬ gists. Alore and more it is appearing that in men of all races and in most of the higher animals, the springs of action are to be found in the influence of certain emotions which express themselves in characteristic instinctive acts. The role which these fundamental responses in the higher organisms play in the bodily economy has re¬ ceived little attention. As a realm for investigation the bodily changes in emotional excitement have been left by the physiologists to the philosophers and psy¬ chologists and to the students of natural history. These students, however, have usually had too slight ex¬ perience in the detailed examination of bodily func¬ tions to permit them to follow the clues which superficial observation might present. In consequence our knowledge of emotional states has been meager. There are, of course, many surface manifestations of excitement. The contraction of blood vessels with resulting pallor, the pouring out of “cold sweat/’ the stopping of saliva-flow so that the “tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth,” the dilation of the pupils, the rising of the hairs, the rapid beating of the heart, the