of the appendix causes sharp, cramp-like pains. Sharp division
of the gall-bladder causes no pain, but distention, which is
the gall-bladder's most common pathologic state, produces pain.
Distention of the intestine causes great pain, but sharp cutting or burning
causes none. In the abdominal viscera, as in the superficial parts,
nociceptors have presumably been developed by specific harmful
influences and each nociceptor is open to stimulation only by a
stimulus of the particular type that produced it.

As a result of the excitation of nociceptors, with which pain
is associated, the routine functions, such as peristalsis, secretion,
and absorption are dispossessed from the control of their respective
nervous mechanisms, just as they are inhibited by fear. This hypothesis
explains the loss of weight, the lassitude, the indigestion,
the constipation, and the many alterations in the functions of the various
glands and organs of the digestive system in chronic appendicitis.
It readily explains also the extraordinary improvement in the digestive
functions and the general health which follows the removal
of an appendix which is so slightly altered physically that only
the clinical results could persuade one that this slight change could
be an adequate cause for such far-reaching and important symptoms.
This hypothesis explains certain gall-bladder phenomena likewise,--
indigestion, loss of weight, disturbed functions, etc.,--and it
may supply the explanation of the disturbance caused by an active
anal fissure, which is a potent noci-associator, and the consequent
disproportionate relief after the trivial operation for its cure.
Noci-association would well explain also the great functional disturbances
of the viscera which immediately follow abdominal operations.

Postoperative and traumatic neuroses are at once explained on