214 



Dr. A. D. Waller. The Galvanometric 



more likely to be useful in connection with military exercises than if 

 applied to industrial labour. 



(2) No law connecting heat production and work performance can be 

 properly formulated until the range of experimental observations under 

 uniform conditions has been carried below the starting point of existing 

 records. It is desirable to define muscular efficiency more strictly than has 

 been usual, and it is possible that the results of Macdonald which the present 

 extended analysis of Benedict and Cathcart's data verifies, are open to more 

 than one interpretation. 



The Galvanometric Measurement of " Emotive " Physiological 



Changes. 

 By A. D. Waller, M.D., F.E.S. 



(Received October 26, 1917.) 



Object. — The object of these experiments was to determine whether or no- 

 in the absence of the ordinary visible signs of emotion (muscular, secretory, 

 etc.), electrical signs of emotive discharges are demonstrable by galvano- 

 meter. 



Aflfirmative results reported by previous observers* have not, to my mind, 

 fully established the reality of the ground fact, independently of the slight 

 and ordinarily insensible muscular movements that can be perceived by a 

 thought reader or recorded by suitable apparatus, and, as a first step in the 

 inquiry, I thought it necessary to take simultaneous records of galvanometric 

 and muscular movements. 



The following communication deals only with the large and sudden 

 electrical responses that are unmistakeably independent of muscular con- 

 traction. The smaller and more gradual fluctuations of more debatable 

 nature will be dealt with in a . future communication. For the present 

 state of the subject it is, in my opinion, necessary, in the first instance, to 

 establish as clearly as possible the chief actual facts by actual demonstration. 



* Veraguth, ' Das Psychogalvanisclie Reflexphenomen," Berlin, 1909. Petersen and 

 Jung, ' Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph in 

 Noi'mal and Insane Individuals.' Goldsheider, " Der sogenannte psycho-galvanische 

 Reflex und seine physikalischchemische Deutung," ' Pfliiger's Archiv,' vol. 162, p. 489 

 (1915). 



