Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/205

 but, when too intense and sudden, either can terminate life.

The fibres of the pneumogastric nerve are distributed principally in and about the lungs and the stomach; hence its name. Whatever may be the motor functions that this nerve supplies, it largely influences the progress of digestion, for, when its fibres are cut below those branches that extend to the trachea, digestion is virtually arrested. Nervous influence is essential to the proper action of the stomach, and, in the region of this organ, the nerves are so interlaced one with the other that, even though the direct road be destroyed, by-paths will still remain for the passage of nerve energy. If the latter were not needed in digestion, no reason would exist for the suspension of function by its withdrawal, and the invariable effect of worry, anxiety, fright, and anger is to arrest for a time all digestive action. The cause is obvious when the close connection between the brain and the nerve ganglia is considered. If nervous force is diverted in directions other than those followed in the digestion of food, exactly similar results occur as when the pneumogastric nerve is severed.

Does the physical condition of the body in