Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2283

WALTER BRADFORD CANNON (1871-1945) The mechanical factors of digestion. Longmans, Green 1911 [2] xi, 227 pp., illus. 21.4 cm.

Cannon was the leading physiologist of his generation and his numerous important discoveries and contributions provided many new areas for physiological research. His scientific interests covered a broad area and included studies of the gastrointestinal tract, the sympathetic nervous system, the endocrine system, the effect of the emotions on the body, and traumatic shock. A native of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Cannon studied at Harvard University, where he received his medical degree in 1900. He served as professor of physiology at Harvard from 1906 until his retirement in 1942. Cannon also was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physiological Society. While still a medical student in 1897, Cannon introduced the use of bismuth salts for X-ray examination of the gastrointestinal tract and made the first observation of peristaltic waves passing over the contents of the stomach. He went on to study gastrointestinal motility in some detail, describing the rate of stomach emptying with different foods and liquids, the behavior of the pyloric sphincter, the origin and course of gastric peristalsis, and the passage of opaque material through the digestive tract. After this basic work, Cannon expanded the scope of his studies to include the mechanisms that controlled these phenomena, and explored the role of the muscles and the nervous system in digestion. In investigating the mechanisms of nervous control, he extended the significance of Pavlov's discovery of the autonomic nervous system's role in the secretion of gastric juice by showing that there was also an important physiological role in the tonus of the gastric musculature. All of this work is summarized in the present monograph.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 1029; Cushing C58