Sensitive Finger Tips

Fear and excitement may make a man blush, sweat, turn pale, run a high blood pressure or faint--or he may just keep a poker face. But under emotional stress, no man, however impassive, can keep his finger tips from palpitating. To A.M.A. conventioneers two young Tulane Medical School doctors exhibited a machine that indicates the state of a man's emotions by "listening" to his finger tips.

The machine checks up on the behavior of blood vessels, which register emotional upsets by expanding and contracting abnormally. Tulane's Drs. George E. Burch and Clarence T. Ray, searching for a simple means of registering psychosomatic disturbances "objectively," used a "plethysmograph." The subject sticks his finger tip into a plastic cup, and the machine records the finger's alternate swelling and contraction by measuring the tiny changes in the cup's air volume.

Drs. Burch and Ray were astonished to discover how sensitive even normal people are. Possible plethysmograph use: spotting the root of a neurotic patient's trouble.

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