The psychic effects of accidents / by Tom A. Williams.

  • Williams, Tom A. (Tom Alfred), 1870-
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychic effects of accidents / by Tom A. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/16
    Monthly Cyclopedia and Medical Bulletin November ifli-d December, 1912.] % By tom a. williams, M.B., C.M. (Edin.), Corresp. Memb. of Neurol, and Psychol. Socs. of Paris; Neurologist to Epiphany Dispensary, WASHINGTON, D. C. The mental confusions on. concussion or compression the result of a blow are psychic, but not psychogenic. They will therefore not be considered here. They are, however, sometimes the source of the false ideas designated as ‘‘postoniric,” which must be considered autosuggestions. The mental ob- tusion produced by a blow, moreover, exalts the suggestibility. This is too obvious to need further comment. The Emotion Excited by an Injury as a Perturber of the AppARiVTUs OF Internal Secretion. An accident which does not injure niay create in a susceptible person so great a fear as to cause a sudden increase of secretion by the thyroid gland. The recent researches of Crile have shown that this occurs alniost constantly in patients with hyperthyroidism when they are frightened by the prospects of an operation. It occurs also in these subjects as a result of anxiety or unusual excitement. Crile believes that the thyroid gland is an organ by means of which there is rapidly available a store of an activating substance for the use of the neuromuscular apparatus when there is special need of its greatest power. Such an occasion is presented by the need for escape from danger. As the preservation of the species in locomotory animals may depend upon capacity to respond suddenly, and with maximum vigor, against impending danger, there has developed through the long course of phylogeny this special organ for the purpose of storing and rapidly setting free when required such a substance as the thyroid juice. But it would be a mistake to confine the need for the greater activation of the gland to physical escape from danger in the crude sense. In the higher animals, life is no longer regulated by experiences purely phylogenetic, by the instincts. It is in the main controlled by ontogenetic incidents which we call experience, and which modify the reactions in fashions incalculably complex. * Read by invitation at a meeting of the Southern Association of Railway Surgeons, held in Washington, D. C., June, 1912.