The regional distribution of emotional sweating in man

Abstract

1. Emotional sweating was induced in normal subjects by mental arithmetic at environmental temperatures of 29 and 26 degrees C and estimated from continuous records of body weight loss.2. The sweat output from four independent regions of the body - (a) the head and neck, (b) the arms and legs, (c) the trunk, and (d) the hands and feet - was studied separately, the remainder of the body being covered in each case by plastic bags. The evaporative water loss from each skin region increased markedly during mental arithmetic.3. The sweat contribution from each region was a substantial fraction of the total body sweat response and appeared to be roughly proportional to the calculated number of sweat glands in each region.4. There is no evidence from these experiments to indicate that the sweat glands of the skin of the hands and feet behave differently to those of the skin of the rest of the body in response to emotional stress.