The Mechanism of Emotional Disturbance of Bodily

IN 1896, when I was a first-year medical student, Professor Henry P. Bowditch, whose memory his former students delight to recall, invited me to make use of the then newly discovered Roentgen rays in a study of the activities of the alimentary canal. In December of that year we demonstrated to the members of the American Physiological Society the passage down the esophagus of a swallowed mass made opaque to the rays by adding subnitrate of bismuth. After that beginning we studied the mechanical functions of the stomach and intestines, and the various conditions affecting the rate of passage of food through the digestive tract. Almost from the start of these investigations an outstanding fact appeared. The smoothrunning recurrent waves of peristalsis coursing over the stomach, and the rapidly shifting segmentation of the food masses in the small intestine were promptly abolished whenever the subject showed signs of anxiety, distress or rage. It was evident that these alimentary functions