Mental mechanisms / by William A. White.

  • White, William A. (William Alanson), 1870-1937.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental mechanisms / by William A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    disturbances which can hardly be conceived to be remotely psychic. The important fact is that from the one to the other is an unin- terrupted chain of associations. Some further illustrations of the relation of mental and physical that seem particularly apt have received comment in the recent literature. They are important because they show clearly how the mental may be the starting point for physical changes. It is unnecessary to illustrate at any length the obverse—^that the mental state is influenced through the physical. Everyone's expe- rience contains numerous patent illustrations of this relationship from the more subtle effect upon one's mind from taking small quantities of alcohol or other drugs to the grosser and more obvious effects of a blow upon the head. This aspect of the rela- tionship needs no support. The recent experiences in thyroidectomy for exophthalmic goitre show how very important the mental state may become in relation to the physical. The success or failure of this operation, with the resulting death of the patient in the latter case, has been shown to depend very largely upon the possibility of so orienting the patient emotionally with reference to the surgical procedure that it is possible to do the operation under favorable conditions so far as the mental state of the patient is concerned. Crile^ in a recent article has discussed this whole matter fully and out- lined some of the methods for preventing or minimizing the ele- ment of psychic trauma. In working over this subject in con- nection with his study of a large series of cases he did some experiments on rabbits, and concludes that pure fear is capable of producing physical lesions in the cells of the rabbit's brain. The recent work of Cannon^ on adrenal secretion is very inter- esting and suggestive. He found that a solution of i to 20,000,000 of epinephrin inhibits the contraction of longitudinal intestine muscle. Blood taken from the vena cava of cats that had been * G. W. Crile: Grave's Disease. A New Principle of Operating Based on a Study of 352 Operations. Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., March 4, 1911. 'W. B. Cannon and D. De La Paz: The Stimulation of Adrenal Secre- tion by Emotional Excitement. Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., March 11, 1911.