[211]. Note sur les modifications de la résistance électrique sous l’influence des excitations sensorielles et des émotions, C. R. Soc. de Biologie, 1888, p. 217.
[212]. Psycho-Physical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph in Normal and Insane Individuals, Brain, Vol. XXX, July, 1907.
[213]. Psychological Review, November, 1908, and January, 1909.
[214]. The Nature and Causation of the Galvanic Phenomena, Psychological Review, March, 1910, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June-July, 1910.
[215]. Having demonstrated the development of electromotive force within the body, these experimenters assumed that every psycho-galvanic reaction was of this type. But plainly, their results do not contradict the phenomenon of diminished resistance of the body to an electric current brought about by emotion stimulating the sweat glands. The evidence indicates, as I have said, two types of psycho-galvanic phenomena.
[216]. On Certain Electrical Processes in the Human Body and Their Relation to Emotional Reactions, Archives of Psychology, March, 1911.
[217]. Morbid self-consciousness is commonly accompanied by fear and other emotions. Nausea, although the specific manifestation of disgust, not rarely is induced by fear.
[218]. A good example is that of an extreme “neurasthenic,” who had been reduced to a condition of severe inanition from inability to take a proper amount of food because of failure of digestion, nausea, and vomiting. Examined by numerous and able physicians in this country and Europe, none had been able to recognize any organic disease or the true cause of the gastric difficulty which remained a puzzle. As a therapeutic measure her stomach had been continuously and regularly washed out. Yet it was not difficult to recognize, after analyzing the symptoms and the conditions of their occurrence, that the disturbances of the gastric functions were due to complex mental factors, the chief of which, emotion, inhibited the gastric function, as in Cannon’s experiments, and indirectly or directly, induced the nausea and vomiting. The correctness of this diagnosis was recognized by the attending physician and patient. Sometimes a phobia complicates a true organic disease and produces symptoms which mimic the symptoms of the latter—heart disease, for example. In this case it is often difficult to recognize the purely phobic character of the symptoms. O. H. C. was such a case. Though there was severe valvular disease of the heart, compensation was good and there was little if any cardiac disability. The attacks of dyspnœa and other symptoms were unmistakably the physical manifestation of a phobia of the disease. The phobia had been artificially created by overcautious physicians.
[219]. One has only to compare routine out-patient hospital records with the actual state of patients to verify the truth of this statement. For purposes of instruction I have frequently done this before the class. The true nature of the psycho-neurosis and the irrelevancy of the routine record and diagnosis have, I believe, been commonly made manifest. Sometimes, however, of course, phobias complicate other diseases, and we have a mixed symptomatology.