Production of disease in animals by psychosocial stimulation

Abstract

Evidence will be presented showing that if the bias produced by an emotional disturbance tilting the physiologic regulatory processes toward pathophysiology is sustained, it will eventually induce nonreversible pathologic disturbances, in other words, disease. Although the previous chapter dealt with disorders of the equilibrium from which recovery is possible, we now show that irreversible damage can occur. Much of this material, however, was collected without the measurement of intermediate functional stages—the focus of the preceding chapters—and therefore lacks direct evidence of a stage of neuroendocrine or local functional involvement. Yet the circumstances surrounding these cases permit assumptions to be made about the probable state, for example, of adrenal-medullary and cortical functions, but most importantly, they do not point to microorganisms as the cause of disease.