The Nervous Affections of the Heart

For example, if the heart starts to beat irregularly, the brain immediately records a panic situation. There are intensive orders to the heart muscle and it obeys, providing there are no special circumstances to prevent it, such as a blockage of an artery. 'My colleague, Dr. B. Engle of the San Francisco Medical Centre in the University of California, has succeeded in deliberately, i.e. suggestively, slowing down or speeding up the heart beats of several patients. The "guinea-pig" sits in front of red, green and yellow signals. "Yellow" corresponds to the patient's normal heart rhythm. If the doctor orders a quicker heart beat, the red lamp lights up and a simulated quicker heart beat plays through the patient's headphones. The patients experimented on are affected audio visually. They try to follow the order of the red lights and the beats in their headphones. In a few seconds the recorded heart curve shows a diagram with a quicker heart rhythm than the person should normally have. In this way it is possible to slow down the pulse, alter blood-pressure, order heat or cold on the surface of the skin ... or even, as in the case of the young paralytic, successively overcome the paralysis ...»