Fear

by A. Mosso

I

Man has, on the average, four kilograms of blood, and this fluid flows incessantly in a system of tubes, in the centre of which the heart is situated. The arteries carrying the blood from the heart to the surface divide into many branches, separate, extend, and visit all parts of the body, feeding and irrigating them. When the ramifications of the arteries become so small that the eye can no longer see them, as, for instance, in the lips, the finger-tips, the cheeks, the ears, or any part of the skin, they take the name of capillaries. This is meant to indicate that these little arteries are as fine as a hair, but in reality they are very much finer. These last closely connected capillary nets give the skin its beautiful rosy colour. But however much they diminish, dividing and subdividing ad infinitum, they still form a system of canals, with walls and closed on all sides. There must be a wound, a cut, or a contusion, before the blood oozes out of these little vessels. Out of the capillaries the blood passes into larger canals called veins. Several veins flowing into each other form a bigger vein; in the same way as a brook is formed by springs, as the brooks, running into each other, form a rivulet, and the rivulets, a river; so the veins gradually receive the blood in larger streams, until at last they carry it in the great trunk-veins to the heart, which drives it again into the arteries.

The little canals in which the blood circulates are provided with muscular fibre. These may relax and the calibre of the vessels is increased, or they contract and the calibre is reduced. The pallor, so characteristic of fear, arises from a contraction of the vessels; the beautiful blush of modesty, most eloquent of all the revelations of psychic facts, is nothing else but a dilatation of the blood-vessels. These two opposite phenomena do not depend on the heart, since we know that the heart beats more forcibly and rapidly during the emotion of modesty as well as during fright. From the nerve-centres innumerable filaments branch off which are distributed to all the ramifications of the blood-vessels. These are the so-called vaso-motor nerves, which, without our noticing it, act on the muscular fibre of the small arteries and veins, increasing or diminishing the calibre of the little canals in which the blood flows.

The effects of the passions are far more evident on the countenance, with its blushing and sudden pallor, than elsewhere, because in no other part of the body are the blood-vessels so sensitive as in the face. There are two reasons for this, firstly, the nerve-centres act more powerfully on these vessels; secondly, they are more delicate, sooner growing tired, and relaxing at the slightest disturbance of nutrition. Indeed, if we inhale the vapour of a substance which, like that of nitrite of amyl, paralyses the blood-vessels, the face immediately becomes of a vivid red, and anyone making this experiment feels his face aflame in a few seconds. This is the simplest method which we possess for artificially producing the external phenomena of shame.

At different ages and in different persons considerable differences are noticeable with regard to the greater or lesser facility with which they blush or grow pale. I made a long series of investigations in order to see at what degree of temperature the paralysis of the blood-vessels of the hands appears when we dip them into hot water, and at what degree, and after what lapse of time, the hands begin to redden when we hold them in ice-water or in snow, the differences being found to be very considerable.

An old lady does not blush under those moral emotions which used to betray her feelings as a girl; and this, not because age has overcome the timidity of youth, or because the hard struggles of life have blunted her sensibility, but because the blood-vessels of the face have, in course of time, become less yielding. On long walks taken in the sun, one always notices that the faces of babies are redder than those of bigger children, and these, in their turn, are more flushed than those of their parents.

Even persons of the same age do not respond in the same way to the internal or external stimuli which tend to dilate or contract the blood-vessels. It is well-known that all girls do not blush equally at a pleasantry directed to them.

One must not ascribe the difference solely to shyness or modesty, since the blood-vessels of different persons respond in various ways. In a very warm room all the young girls have not equally flushed cheeks, and if we pay attention when, on leaving a company, we touch the hands of a great number of people who have been together for several hours in the same room, we may easily notice the very great difference in the temperature of the hands. In such circumstances, to have warm or cold hands only means to have expanded or contracted blood-vessels.

Besides this action of warmth or cold, which is, so to speak, local, there is another central action much more important to us—that which produces the pallor, or flush of emotion. The nerve-centres can, by means of the vaso-motor nerves, greatly alter the circulation in the various parts of the body, as we all know from the continual changes which the colour of the skin undergoes.

It is not necessary to mention the studies made on animals; the observations which can be made on man suffice to show how this nervous mechanism works. I know several persons whose blood-vessels differ in sensitiveness on the right and left side, and who, therefore, feel the effects of emotion more intensely on one side of the body.

At balls, on excursions in the mountains, and walks in the sunshine, the attentive observer will notice great differences in the colour of the two sides of the face. One often becomes aware of this from the perspiration, which is more abundant on one part of the forehead than on the other. My sister, for instance, when dancing, has one cheek very much flushed, the other less so. With her, it is the right side of the body which possesses more sensitive blood-vessels, which are, therefore, more easily tired by exertion, heat, or emotion; consequently this half of the face becomes redder, and receives a greater quantity of blood.

A few days ago we went for a walk together into the mountains. Looking down from a certain point we saw in the valley the funeral of a child. A girl carried the little corpse, covered with flowers, on her head. The bells of the village were ringing the 'Gloria,’ the funeral train, with the priest at the head, appeared and vanished from time to time between the green trees; children ran behind, carrying candles and scattering flowers. It was a splendid autumn evening.

We had seen that little cherub with its golden hair just a few days before, healthy and beautiful, enjoying itself at play, and now it was to be hidden for ever under the cypresses of the churchyard. It was our maid who carried the little one on her head; as she had said to us, 'I must take him to be buried, because I am his godmother.’

My sister told me that as she watched she felt a shiver, as though she had goose-skin all down the right side of the body, from head to foot.

Generally, the excitability of the vaso-motor nerves is the same in both halves of the body, and we all experience during strong emotions a feeling of cold, due to the contraction of the vessels, and spreading over the whole body, as though a cold sheet were being wrapped round our limbs and pressed upon our heart; this giving us an impression which one might call a mingling of several indefinite and varying impressions, as of darkness, cold, and of a dull, deep noise. The impression is generally more perceptible in the head and back, more rarely in the legs. Sometimes these contractions of the vessels take place without our knowing the cause; the popular superstition says that death is loitering near. It is one of those contractions arising spontaneously, like the involuntary, sudden starts to which we are often subject in bed before falling asleep.