Man the slave & master / by Mark Graubard.

  • Graubard, Mark, 1904-1992.
Date:
1939
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Man the slave & master / by Mark Graubard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    compensations immediately after disturbances have set in cannot be overstressed. These are the main character istics of living matter. Internal sense organs keep the animal consciously or unconsciously aware of such distur bances and maintain physiological constancy by automatic adjustments or relays to consciousness. In each case the organism corrects the disturbance, successfully or not. The walls of the stomach are provided with sense organs which inform us of hunger. When the stomach is empty it contracts, stimulates the sense organs, produces a feeling of hunger, and causes the animal to seek food. Within the intestine, bladder, glands, and muscle, in fact in most organs, are located receptors sensitive to pressure and chemical changes. Their stimuli create responses of which we are totally unaware. Such reactions we call unconscious. Muscle tissue, tendons, and joints are supplied with receptors, small sensory cells which inform the central nervous system of changes occurring in their vicinity. Subsequently effector organs are brought into action to overcome the disturbing force and produce changes. In brief, we must think of the animal as a dynamic centre of complex reactions with the external and internal environments and equipped with a multitude of mechanisms for maintaining the constancy of its physiological composition and internal milieu.