Cannon introduced the bismuth meal. He showed that bismuth, opaque to x rays, could be of great use in conjunction with roentgenology in the investigation of the digestive tract. See No. 1029.

Summarized research begun in 1896. See No. 3519.

Observation of the effect of strong emotions on gastrointestinal motility (No. 1029) led Cannon to examination of the sympathetic nervous system and its emergency function. Cannon showed the close connexion between the endocrine glands and the emotions.

First successful experimental production of exophthalmic goitre. With C. A. L. Binger and R. Fitz.

"In the fall of 1916, before the United States entered World War I, the National Research Council named Cannon a member of a committee on traumatic shock. Later he joined the Harvard University Hospital Unit. On his way to France in May 1917, he stopped in London and arranged with Fletcher, first secretary of the Medical Research Committee, to join the group of physicians and surgeons of the British Expeditionary Forces who were dealing with shock cases at the Casualty Clearing Station at Béthune. . . . Initially Cannon and his associates in the field concentrated their therapeutic efforts on treating the acidosis that accompanies shock. Later they recognized that the acidosis was merely a secondary phenomenon, the result of the inadequacy of tissue perfusion. In 1923 Cannon summarized his wartime experience in Traumatic Shock" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

Cannon and Bacq suggested the name “sympathin” for a substance which they considered to be liberated into the blood stream following nerve stimulation and which acted in the same manner as sympathetic impulses. See also No. 1350.

A discussion of the regulation of body fluids, hunger, thirst, temperature, oxygen supply, water, sugar, and proteins of the body, and the role of the sympathetic-adrenal mechanism.

Adrenaline and sympathin were suggested to be unidentical substances, and Cannon and Rosenblueth proposed the terms “sympathin E” and “sympathin I”.

The authors hypothesized the existence of two sympathins, one excitatory and the other inhibitory, now known as epinephrine and norepinephrine. See Nos. 1144 & 1350.