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As my bare palms clung to the Things I realized with finality that whatever their activation, their life, they WERE metal. There was no mistaking now the testimony of touch. Metal they were, with a hint upon contact of highly polished platinum, or at the least of a metal as finely grained as it.
So strong is the influence of phylogenetic experience that though an enemy to-day may not be met by actual physical attack, yet the decks are cleared for action, as it were, and the weapons made ready, the body as a result being shaken and exhausted. The type of emotion is plainly declared by the activation of the muscles which would be used if the appropriate physical action were consummated.
If the environmental impacts are repeated with such frequency that the brain-cells have no time for restoration between them, the energy of the cells becomes exhausted and a condition of shock results. Every action of the body may thus be analyzed into a stimulation of ceptors, a consequent discharge of brain-cell energy, and a final adaptive activation of the appropriate part.
If the activities are consummated, the fuel glycogen and the activating secretions from the thyroid, the adrenals, the hypophysis are consumed. In the activation without action, these products must be eliminated as waste products and so a heavy strain is put upon the organs of elimination.
If, however, instead of an intense overwhelming activation, the kinetic system is continuously or intermittently overstimulated through a considerable period of time, as long as each of the links in the kinetic chain takes the strain equally the result will be excessive energy conversion, excessive work done; but usually, under stress, some one link in the chain is unable to take the strain and then the evenly balanced work of the several organs of the kinetic system is disturbed.
These pulse and respiration findings are the more striking in that individuals in stupor are, by the very nature of their disease, free from emotional excitement. This imbalance could result from a poverty of circulating adrenalin which is necessary for the activation of the sympathetic nerves. A cause for low suprarenal function is to be found in the apathy of the stupor case.
If our thesis that men and animals are mechanisms responding to environmental stimuli be correct, and further, if the speed of energy output be due to changes in the activating organs as a result of adaptive stimulation, then we should expect to find physical changes in the activating glands during the cycles of increased activation. What are the facts?
This whole train of deleterious results of body activation without action may be best observed and studied in that most emotional of diseases exophthalmic goiter. Exophthalmic goiter may result from long emotional or mental stress in those cases in which the thyroid takes the brunt of the strain upon the mechanism.
From the foregoing statements we are able to understand the muscular weakness following fever; we can understand why the senile have neither muscular power nor strong febrile reaction; why long-continued infections produce pathologic changes in the organs constituting the kinetic chain; why the same pathologic changes result from various forms of activation of the kinetic system.
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