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Walter Bradford Cannon (Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, October 19, 1871 – Lincoln, Massachusetts, October 19, 1945) was an American physiologist.
Biography He was President of the American Physiological Society from 1914 to 1916. Family He was married to Cornelia James Cannon, a best-selling author. Although not mountaineers, during their honeymoon the couple were the first, on July 19, 1901, to reach the summit of the unclimbed southwest peak (2657 m or 8716 ft) of Goat Mountain, between Lake McDonald and Logan Pass in what is now Glacier National Park. The peak was subsequently named Mount Cannon by the United States Geological Survey *. His son was Dr. Bradford Cannon, a military plastic surgeon and radiation researcher. His daughter is Marian Cannon Schlesinger, a painter and author living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Use of salts of heavy metals in X-Rays He was one of the first researchers to mix salts of heavy metals (including bismuth subnitrate, bismuth oxychloride, and barium sulfate) into foodstuffs in order to improve the contrast of X-ray images of the digestive tract. The barium meal is a modern derivative of this research. Fight or flight In 1915, he coined the term fight or flight to describe an animal's response to threats (Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement, Appleton, New York, 1915). Homeostasis He developed the concept of homeostasis, and popularized it in his book The Wisdom of the Body, published in 1932 by W. W. Norton, New York. Cannon presented four tentative propositions to describe the general features of homeostasis: Dry mouth He put forward the Dry Mouth Hypothesis, stating that people get thirsty because their mouth gets dry. He did an experiment on two dogs. He cut their throats and inserted a small tube. Any water swallowed would go through their mouths and out by the tube, never reaching the stomach. He found out that these dogs would lap up the same amount of water as control dogs. Books A Scientist's Experiences In Medical Research | ||||||||
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