The Value of Increased Arterial Pressure in Pain and Strong Emotion
As stated in a previous paragraph, there is evidence that the vessels supplying a muscle dilate when the muscle becomes active. And although the normal blood pressure (about 120 millimeters of mercury) may be able to keep adequately supplied with blood the single muscle used in our investigation, a higher pressure might be required when more muscles are involved in activity, for a more widely spread dilation might then reduce the pressure to the point at which there would be insufficient circulation in active organs. Furthermore, with many muscles active, the amount of waste would be greatly augmented, and the need for abundant blood supply would thereby to a like degree be increased. For both reasons a rise of general arterial pressure would prove advantageous. The high pressure developed in excitement and pain, therefore, might be specially serviceable in the muscular activities which are likely to accompany excitement and pain.
In connection with the foregoing considerations, the action of adrenin on the distribution of blood in the body is highly interesting. By measuring alterations in the volume of various viscera and the limbs, Oliver and Schäfer[5] proved that the viscera of the splanchnic area—e. g., the spleen, the kidneys, and the intestines—suffer a considerable decrease of volume when adrenin is administered, whereas the limbs into which the blood is forced from the splanchnic region actually increase in size. The action of adrenin indicates the relative degrees of sympathetic innervations. In other words, at times of pain and excitement sympathetic discharges, probably aided by the adrenal secretion simultaneously liberated, will drive the blood out of the vegetative organs of the interior, which serve the routine needs of the body, into the skeletal muscles which have to meet by extra action the urgent demands of struggle or escape.
But there are exceptions to the general statement that by adrenin the viscera are emptied of their blood. It is well known that adrenin has a vasodilator, not a vasoconstrictor, action on the arteries of the heart; it is well known also that adrenin affects the vessels of the brain and the lungs only slightly if at all. From this evidence we may infer that sympathetic impulses, though causing constriction of the arteries of the abdominal viscera, have no effective influence on those of the pulmonary and intracranial areas and actually increase the blood supply to the heart. Thus the absolutely and immediately essential organs—those the ancients called the “tripod of life”—the heart, the lungs, the brain (as well as its instruments, the skeletal muscles)—are in times of excitement abundantly supplied with blood taken from organs of less importance in critical moments. This shifting of the blood so that there is an assured adequate supply to structures essential for the preservation of the individual may reasonably be interpreted as a fact of prime biological significance. It will be placed in its proper setting when the other evidence of bodily changes in pain and excitement have been presented.