Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
Just as the larynx, the ear, the nose, the sole of the foot, and the skin have all developed the specific type of nociceptors which are adapted for their specific protective purposes, and which, when adequately stimulated, respond in a specific manner in accordance with the law of phylogenetic association, so, the abdominal viscera have developed equally specific nociceptors as a protection against specific nocuous influences.
On this ground the finger, because it is exposed, should have many nociceptors, while the brain, though the most important organ of the body, should have no nociceptors because, during a vast period of time, it has been protected by a skull. Realizing that this point is a crucial one, Dr. Sloan and I made a series of careful experiments.
In the abdominal viscera, as in the superficial parts, nociceptors have presumably been developed by specific harmful influences and each nociceptor is open to stimulation only by a stimulus of the particular type that produced it.
As a result of the excitation of nociceptors, with which pain is associated, the routine functions, such as peristalsis, secretion, and absorption are dispossessed from the control of their respective nervous mechanisms, just as they are inhibited by fear.
In response to an adequate stimulus, the nervous system is integrated for a specific purpose by the stimulated receptor, and but one stimulus at a time has possession of the final common path the nerve mechanisms for action. The most numerous receptors are those for harmful contact; these are the nociceptors.
Sexual receptors are implanted in the body by natural selection, and the adequate stimuli excite the nerve-muscular reactions of conjugation in a manner analogous to the action of the adequate stimuli of the nociceptors. The specific response of either the sexual receptors or the nociceptors is at the expense of the total amount of nervous energy available at the moment.
Animals whose natural defense is in muscular exertion, among which is man, may have their dischargeable nervous energy exhausted by fear alone, or by trauma alone, but most effectively by the combination of both. What is the mechanism of this discharge of energy? It is the adequate stimulation of the nociceptors and the physiologic response for the purpose of self-preservation.
There are no nociceptors misplaced; none wasted; none that do not make an adequate response to adequate stimulation. Another most significant proof that the environment of the past has been the creator of the man of to-day is seen in the fact that man has added to his environment certain factors to which adaptation has not as yet been made.
The discharge of energy caused by an adequate mechanical stimulation of the nociceptors is best explained in accordance with the law of phylogenetic association. That is, injuries awaken those reflex actions which by natural selection have been developed for the purpose of self-protection.
The nociceptors in the abdomen, like nociceptors elsewhere, have been established as a result of some kind of injury to which during vast periods of time this region has been frequently exposed. On this premise, we should at once conclude that there are no nociceptors for heat within the abdomen because, during countless years, the intra-abdominal region never came into contact with heat.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking