Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage
An Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement
- Author:
Walter B. Cannon. Second edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1929. Pp. 404, with 43 illustrations.
This book presents the bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, rage, and thirst. It gives an authoritative discussion of the literature on these subjects.
Tho work is based on a total of forty-two articles on research published over a period of twenty years. Most of these extensive investigations have been conducted at the Harvard Physiological Laboratories but also in other laboratories by students of this distinguished author; in Russia, Japan, England, Argentina and Algiers. Tho data presented are the researches of thirty-four students to whom Professor Cannon dedicates this volume naming each student as a collaborator. This example might well be emulated by other professors who seldom make public the names of their research assistants even though these may have done the greater part of the work.
The following chapter titles speak for themselves: “The effect of emotions on digestion. The general organization of the visceral nerves concerned in emotions. Methods of demonstrating adrenal secretion and its nervous control. Adrenal secretion in strong emotions and pain. The increase of blood sugar in pain and great emotion. Improved contraction of fatigued muscle after splanchnic stimulation of the adrenal gland. The effects on contraction of fatigued muscle of varying the arterial blood pressure. The specific role of adrenin in counteracting the effects of fatigue. The hastening of coagulation of blood by adrenin. The hastening of coagulation of blood in pain and great emotion. Emotional increase of red corpuscles. The utility of the bodily changes in pain and great emotion. The energizing influence of emotional excitement. Emotional derangement of bodily functions. The naturo of hunger. The physiological basis of thirst. The interrelations of emotions. A critical examination of the James-Lange theory of emotions. Emotion as a function of the optic thalamus. Alternative satisfactions for the fighting emotions.”
The content of this work is fundamental to a thorough understanding of the psychological and physiological interactions. Every student of psychology, to whatever school of psychologic thought he may adhere, will need to know the facts and methods so ably presented. There is no other book that approaches this in clarity, directness and concentration of physiological and psychological experimental data so essential to the student of medicine and of psychology. Max Trumper
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.