Emotions and Gastric Function.

REVIEWING the life histories of the patients with ulcers, Mittelniann and Wolff found that the patients had been subject to prolonged emotional turmoil, involving mainly conflict, anxiety, guilt, hostility and resentment. During periods of experimentally induced anxiety, hostility and resentment, they found a rise in acidity and increased contractions in the stomachs of all the patients suffering from ulcer and in many of the normal subjects. Moreover, they were able to reverse this process and cause a decrease in acidity and motility by inducing in their patients feelings of contentment and well-being. In all the patients with peptic lesions it was possible to demonstrate a chronological parallelism between the onset, recrudescence and course of gastroduodenal symptoms, and the occurrence of untoward emotional reactions. The situations that prompted these reac-