A CRITIQUE OF THE DOCTRINE OF "CENTERS' 
IN TEMPERATURE REGULATION 
Walter J. Freeman 
Department of Physiology 
University of California 
Berkeley, California 
The title of this presentation was taken from a remark by Dr. 
Hemingway at the start of this conference, in which he said that he 
would describe a "center" for shivering, even though he did not like 
the term. I agree that it is not a good term in some respects, but 
on the other hand I think that if properly used, it can serve us as 
well in the future as it has in the past. 
HISTORICAL SURVEY 
One of the remarkable features about temperature regulation 
is that not merely one organ is involved but all the organs in the 
body. Respiration, digestion, or reproduction predominantly involve 
one organ and its ramifying parts, but in temperature regulation 
one cannot simply consider the skin, or the muscles, or the endo- 
crines, but all of them in the patterns of activation imposed on 
them by the central nervous system. One can make balance sheets 
of energy exchange during different patterns, or one can study the 
way in which the central nervous system creates these patterns, 
by means of which the brain regulates its own operating temperature. 
Systematic analysis of this property was initiated about one 
hundred years ago with the studies by Samuel Goltz in 1874 on the 
physiological effects of heating and cooling carotid blood. This was 
a particularly propitious time to begin, for operative intervention 
in the brain had just become feasible with the introduction of aseptic 
surgery. Claude Bernard had just published his PhysiologieGenerale 
in which the doctrine of the constancy of the internal milieu was 
first set forth, and there was ample evidence for the regularity of 
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