Can your emotions kill you 1

Can your emotions kill you?

by george engle, M.D.

A newly appointed president of cbs inc. died suddenly at the age of 51 the night after his father’s death.

A prominent british tycoon, prematurely forced into retirement after a bitter dispute with his company, died at the airport as he was leaving the country honoring the late Louis satchmo Armstrong, his second wife stricken with a fatal heart attack as she played st. Louis blues .

   coincidences? perhaps. still, one can’t help wondering whether these deaths might have been brought on by emotional strain.

   the notion that sudden death can be traced to such trauma has a long and persistent history. as  far back as written records exist, people are described as dying suddenly while in the throes of fear, rage ,grief, humiliation or joy. in the first century A.D,. the roman emperor nerva reportedly died of a violent excess of anger against a senator who had offended him. pope innocent IV is said to have succumbed suddenly because of the morbid effects of grief upon his system from the disastrous overthrow of his army by the germ theory of disease in the late 19^th century, the notion that emotional trauma could cause sudden death fell into disrepute. yet scientific interest did not cease altogether. for instance, noted Harvard physiologist Walter cannon wrote a paper in 1942 discussing possible physiological mechanisms in voodoo death . in the late 1960s, clinicians began to report patients with heart disease who died suddenly after being at the end of their rope.