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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2018
To some extent we have anticipated the consideration of the influence of emotion on spasmodic action of the muscles, in describing the effects produced by powerful emotional states, as terror, which often causes excessive or spasmodic contraction, sometimes amounting to tetanic rigidity. The sobbing of grief, the laughter of joy, afford daily examples of spasmodic muscular contraction from emotional stimulus. The spasm which chokes the voice and converts the fibres of the platysma myoides into rigid cords in terror, the convulsion and tremors of the facial muscles in despair, the clenched hands, the convulsive opening of the mouth and spasm of the diaphragm and muscles of the chest in fear, the spasm of the jaws in rage, the spasmodic rigidity of the muscles in a maniacal paroxysm, are they not written in the graphic pages of Bell ? With the exception of mania, these spasmodic contractions are consistent with health. We shall include under the present section all convulsive attacks, whether epileptic or not, whether infantile, puerperal, or hysterical, trembling palsy, chorea, spasms of the larynx and pharynx, nervous hydrophobia, and tetanus. Physiologically, when of emotional origin, they may all be referred to disturbance, more or less serious, of the functions of the sensori-motor apparatus, including the medulla oblongata.
Continued from page 195.) INFLUENCE OF EMOTIONS.Google Scholar
b) Excessive and irregular muscular contraction (spasms and convulsions) .Google Scholar
∗ Practical Obs. in Medicine, 1846, p. 22.Google Scholar
† On the Intimate Structure of the Brain, Phil. Trans., 1868, p. 318, Schroeder van der Kolk held the same opinion, and went further. He found that in beasts of prey, these bodies are more highly developed than in herbivorous animals, the passions, especially anger, being accordingly much more strongly expressed in the faces of the carnivora than the herbivora. “The superior corpora olivaria appear to be organs for the involuntary or reflex expressions of the passions. … In birds they seem to serve for the movements of the feathers in the head and neck in passion.” (On the minute structure and functions of the medulla oblongata, New Syd Soc. Trans., Dr. Moore, 1859, p. 204.) Google Scholar
∗ Todd's, Dr. Lumleian Lectures, 1849. Carpenter's “Human Physiology,” 4th edit. p. 876.Google Scholar
† “On the Nature and Origin of Epilepsy,” 1857.—New Syd. Soc. Trans., 1859, p. 101.Google Scholar
∗ “Phil. Trans.,” 1868. In the same memoir this admirable histologist also observes that these bodies are not only the motor centres through which the different movements are co-ordinated for expressing the passions and emotions, but those through which different movements are affected by sudden, violent, and peculiar impressions on the special senses.Google Scholar
∗ “Practical Observations in Medicine,” p. 39.Google Scholar
∗ The writer himself heard the following from one of these preachers:—Addressing “the dear children,” he exclaimed, “If you are wicked you will go to the devil, and live with him and his angels. Won't it be very awful to be put into a great blue flame? Your hands will be all burnt with the big fire, and your feet and all your body; and the worst of it is that you will be always burning, and yet never burnt out !” Google Scholar
† See Hecker's “Epidemics of the Middle Ages.” Syd. Soc. Trans., p. 145.Google Scholar
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