MIND AND BODY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2278, 19 May 1921, Page 4

MIND AND BODY.

The responsiveness of the body to states of the mind is well known. Popular phrases in many languages place the seat of the emotions in close vicinity to the belt —above it or below. More exact inquiries seem to show that the blood-vessels respond quickly to stimulations of the brain even before the latter have risen into the field of consciousness. Many years ago an Italian physician recorded observations on a patient part of whose brain was exposed. In profound sleep the brain was pale, but flushed before awakening took place. A whisper in the ear of the sleeper or the banging of a door in the hospital, corridor at once brought blood to the brain some seconds before the eyes were opened. It is easy to read purpose into such reactions, to suppose that the machinery of consciousness must be fed before it can come into operation. Cut there are other re-

actions more difficult to interpret. By n simple device the blood pressure in the arm can be made visible on ft graduated' scale. When the apparatus hasbecn balanced so that the index is at rest, a pleasant stimulus, such as a sweet scene, shows an immediate rise; an unpleasant sensation, such as a nasty odour, causes it to fall. .Professor A. D. Waller, lecturing at the Royal Institution, has shown a resonance of a more delicate and still less intelligible kind. The palm of the hand was placed in an electric circuit arranged so that a spot of light, lraw elling on a scale, showed changes in the elecfrical resistances of the skin. A slightly painful stimulus, such as a pin-prick or a discordant sound, lowered the resistance and sent the spot of light to the left. But the apprehension of the stimulus, the threat by"the lecturer that he was about to apply it, showed a greater response. It appears that, in normal persons, only the skin of the palms and the soles has this curious property. The suggestion occurs that it may he a relic from our ancestray arboreal life, when the. sudden apprehension of; danger made us tighten our clutch on the branches.