WAYS IN WHICH EMOTION CAN AFFECT THE DIGESTIVE TRACT

Abstract

It is strange how easily satisfied we physicians often are with a few words that mean little. Here we are day after day and often several times a day diagnosing "nervous indigestion" and yet what do most of us really know about the ways in which a tired brain can produce distress in the abdomen? What would we say if a patient were to ask us to explain just how emotion was affecting his digestive tract; I mean a patient so intelligent and pertinacious that he could not be put off with a few vague remarks about the sympathetics and parasympathetics? We might turn for help to the physiologists, but soon we would learn their limitations. As can be seen from a perusal of the following notes, they can tell us many interesting things about emotion and gastric digestion; but when we get off onto the subject of emotion and