Book Description

BODILY CHANGES IN PAIN, HUNGER, FEAR AND RAGE- AN ACCOUNT OF RECENT RE SEARCHES INTO THE FUNCTION OF EMOTIONAL EXCITEMENT by WALTER B. CANNON. Originally published in 1927. PREFACE: Fear, rage and pain, and the pangs of hunger are all primitive experiences which human beings share with the lower animals. These experiences are properly classed as among the most powerful that determine the action of men and beasts. A knowledge of the conditions which attend these experiences, therefore, is of general and fundamental importance in the interpretation of behavior. During the past four years there has been conducted, in the Harvard Physiological Laboratory, a series of in vestigations concerned with the bodily changes which occur in conjunction with pain, hunger and the major emotions. A group of remarkable alterations in the bodily economy have been discovered, all of which can reasonably be regarded as responses that are nicely adapted to the individual's welfare and preservation. Because these physiological adaptations are interesting both in themselves and in their interpretation, not only to physiologists and psychologists, but to others as well, it has seemed worth while to gather together in con venient form the original accounts of the experiments, which have been published in various American medical and physiological journals. I have, however, attempted to arrange the results and discussions in an orderly and consecutive manner, and I have tried also to eliminate or incidentally to explain the technical terms, so that the exposition will be easily understood by any intelligent reader even though not trained in the med ical sciences. My first interest in the conditions attendingpain, hunger and strong emotional states was stimulated dur ing the course of a previous series of researches on the motor activities of the alimentary canal. A summary of these researches appeared in 1911, under the title, The Mechanical Factors of Digestion. The studies recorded in the present volume may be regarded as a natural sequence of observations on the influence of emotional states on the digestive process, which were reported in that volume. W. B. CANNON. Contents include: CHAPTER I: PAGES THE EFFECT OF THE EMOTIONS ON DIGESTION 1-21. CHAPTER II: THE GENERAL ORGANIZATION 40-51. CHAPTER IV ADRENAL SECRETION IN STRONG EMOTIONS AND PAIN 52-65. CHAPTER V THE INCREASE OF BLOOD SUGAR IN PAIN AND GREAT EMOTION ...