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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    accept our evidence for reflex control. This dilemma they have not solved. And the later corroboration of our results by Japanese investigators who used Stewart and Rogoff’s own method leaves them without any sup¬ port whatever for their contention that the discharge of adrenin is steady and invariable and wholly un¬ influenced by sensory stimulation. The logic of all these experiments may be briefly summed up. That the adrenal glands are subject to direct 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. Exceed¬ ingly delicate biological tests (intestinal muscle and denervated organs) and an examination of the glands themselves, afford clear evidence that in pain and deep emotion the glands do, in fact, pour out an excess of adrenin into the circulating blood. Here, then, is a remarkable group of phenomena a pair of glands stimulated to activity in times of strong excitement and by such nerve impulses as themselves produce at such times profound changes in the viscera; and a secretion given forth into the blood stream by these glands, which is capable of inducing by itself, or of augmenting the nervous influences which induce, the very changes in the viscera which accompany suf-