Effects of Anger

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1903

BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M. D., in his “Diseases of Modern Life,” says that, of the passions which act most severely upon the physical life, anger stands first. As this is a state of mind that may not be wholly unknown among our readers, it may be wise to quote the grave effects of the unrestrained influence of this passion upon the heart and brain:—

“He is a man very rich indeed in physical power who can afford to be angry. The richest can not afford it many times without insuring the penalty, a penalty that is always severe. What is still worse of this passion is that the very disease it engenders feeds it, so that if the pulse go many times unchecked, it becomes the master of the man.”

The effects of passion are brought out entirely through disturbance in the organic nervous chain.

We say a man was “red” with rage, or we say he was “white” with rage, by which terms, as by degrees of comparison, we express the extent of his fury. Physiologically we are then speaking of the nervous condition of the minute circulation of his blood; that “red” rage means partial paralysis of minute blood-vessels; that “white” rage means temporary suspension of the action of the prime mover of the circulation itself.

Such disturbances can not often be produced without the occurrence of permanent organic evils of the vital organs, especially of the heart and brain.

The effect of rage upon the heart is to make its action intermittent.

Dr. Richardson gives a striking example of this more severely.

Many persons die in one or other of the two stages I have named. They die in the moment of white rage, when the cerebral vessels and heart are paralyzed. Then we say they die of faintness, during excitement. Or, they die more slowly, when the rage has passed and the congestion of reaction has led to engorgement of the vessels of the brain. Then the engorgement has caused stoppage of the circulation there, or a vessel has given away, or serious fluid has exuded, producing pressure, and we report that the death was from apoplexy, following upon excitement.—The Household.