Commentary
See articles on pages 209 and 214Descartes and the gut: "I'm pink therefore I am"
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In 1637 Rene Descartes wrote "The soul by which I am, what I am, is entirely distinct from my body and even if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is".1 Descartes was thus reflecting on the longstanding conundrum of relationships between body and soul which have continued to this day and are equally mirrored in our views on diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.
The fathers of gastroenterology clearly recognised the relationships
between the brain and gut. In his classic studies of the control of
gastric secretion conducted on his subject Tom with a permanent gastric
fistula,2 Stuart Wolf found that emotional state affected
secretion and that mucosal blood flow, measured by a simple thermistor,
altered in parallel.3 Similar relationships between rectal
mucosal blood flow and psychological state were also reported by
Almy.4 In his now classic "hoax" experiment, he
induced anxiety in a "volunteer"
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