Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

“The dog had been prepared beforehand by the attendant. Little empty bottles were attached to the collecting tubes, and as soon as the dog saw Pawlow, he seemed to be very happy, and wagged his tail, and his eyes gave evidence of satisfaction; but there was no flow of saliva until Professor Pawlow brought near to his nose a bottle containing some powdered meat. He took out the cork in the presence of the dog, turned out a little of it in his hand, shook it in the bottle and brought it near to the dog’s nose. The dog began to sniff it, licked his chops, snapped his jaws, reached out after it, and in less than two minutes the saliva began to flow very profusely, and it was not more than fifteen or twenty seconds before the saliva was pouring down into the bottles.

“Professor Pawlow, then, after holding the bottle out before the dog for about thirty seconds, put the stopper into it, and put it behind him out of sight, and in a very few seconds the saliva ceased to flow. Then he brought it back again, showed it to the dog, brought it near his nose, allowed him to smell it but kept it just out of his reach all the time, and the saliva poured out again freely. He continued this until the dog finally made up his mind he was not going to get any meat, and when the powder was brought near to him he paid no attention to it, but turned his head around and looked very disappointed and very ugly, and at that point, the saliva ceased to flow.

“That was a very remarkable thing to me. The meat was right there, he could smell it, but he knew he was not going to get it, so he was angry, and as his state of mind changed, the secretion of saliva was wholly arrested. I was very much surprised. Of course, I believe thoroughly in the importance of being in a happy state of mind when eating, but I really did not appreciate thoroughly the importance of those things; I did not fully appreciate how positive an inhibitor of the activity of the salivary glands an unhappy state might be.

“But a common experiment made in India shows the same idea. When an Anglo-Indian has lost anything of value, he has his whole family of servants brought to him to find out which one has stolen it. A common test is to stand them all up in a row, and then to give each one a morsel of dry rice to chew. They must chew this rice for five minutes, and then the master goes around and examines each man’s mouth. The mouth which is dry is the mouth of the culprit, and the state of that man’s mind has the effect of arresting the flow of saliva. Pawlow has shown that this is a positive physiologic law and operates upon the dogs as well as upon human beings.

“Another experiment astonished me even more than this. We followed Pawlow down through a long narrow hall and upstairs into a room which was small and secluded, in a very quiet part of the laboratory, remote from any noisy occupation, and there we found a brown dog standing on a high table. It was a delicate and very intelligent looking animal. The attendant sat near by, and the dog was prepared as the other had been. As we came in, the Professor beckoned to us to sit down on a little bench beside the wall and indicated that we should be quiet. He stepped up to the dog, looked at him, and the dog recognized him with a smile in the dog’s way of smiling!—and presently the saliva began to flow.

“Professor Pawlow was very much surprised. We had come into the room and he had offered the dog nothing, but the saliva was flowing. That was contrary to his expectation. He looked with considerable astonishment at the attendant. The attendant quietly said, ‘You have been feeding meat to the other dog, and he smells the meat on your hands.’

“The dog had such a keen sense of smell that the odor of meat on Pawlow’s hands even at a distance of several feet was sufficient to cause the saliva to flow. So he went out, washed his hands and came back. At this time, not a drop of saliva was flowing. The arrangement was such that every particle secreted must come outside of the mouth into these bottles. While we were waiting in silence, watching the dog quietly, suddenly the attendant pressed his foot without making any motion of the body at all, upon a little lever beneath his toe and the result was the causing of a high musical note to be sounded, a very high pitched tone.

“Instantly, in less than three seconds, the saliva was flowing into the tube. We waited a little while until the saliva ceased to flow, then the note was sounded again. Instantly the saliva began to flow.

“Professor Pawlow has been experimenting upon this line for a long time. Other experiments were made. One interesting experiment was with a large number of dogs. He had upon one counter a long row of dogs, about a dozen, which had their stomachs fixed in such a way, and their throats fixed also in such a way, that upon the secretion of the gastric juice in the stomach the juice would flow out into a flask.

“The dogs were suspended in a sort of harness. They had had their throats fixed so that food instead of going into the stomach came out at the throat. So as the dog ate the food, the food fell back into the plate and the dog continued eating the same breakfast over and over. These dogs had been eating the same breakfast for four hours, from six to ten o’clock in the morning, and they were still eating, and just as hungry as ever because there was no food entering their stomachs at all and their appetites were growing keener every moment, and they were having a wonderfully good time. I thought that some people I have met might enjoy such an arrangement. This really has the same effect without having your throat cut.