Voodoo Death - Walter Cannon and His Work

Walter Cannon and His Work

In 1942, Walter Bradford Cannon, MD, now looked to as a forerunner in modern physiological psychology, published a work wherein he postulated the idea that fear could affect a person to the point that their physical condition would deteriorate in response to psychological distress. Citing examples of extraordinary deaths (and their extraneous circumstances) in aboriginal societies, Cannon posited the idea that fear of supernatural consequences to broken societal taboos caused the deaths witnessed in the natives.

What Cannon describes has since been termed "bone-pointing syndrome," wherein an individual receives some sort of shock—often the breaking of some social/religious taboo—that he interprets as an ill omen for himself; his physical condition then deteriorates at a rapid rate, and he dies within a period as short as 24 hours after the initial shock.

Cannon discusses the example of a Maori woman who learned that the fruit she had eaten came from a tapu (tabooed) place; less than 24 hours later she was dead. Conversely, Cannon also shares the example of a young man who had fallen ill when the local witch doctor had pointed a bone at him, a societal taboo that meant a curse of death; however, when the perpetrator explained to the young man that the whole thing had been a mistake, and that no bone had been pointed at him at all, the young man's health returned instantly.

Cannon notes the similarities in each case: the individuals were both members of a society where beliefs in the supernatural are fiercely upheld, and both had suffered what they both believed to be some form of a curse as dictated within their personal beliefs; also, the individuals shared similar physical symptoms. And yet, in the case of the young man, once the cause for the psychological distress was removed, his mysterious illness disappeared. Cannon attributes these rather drastic physical repercussions as the workings of the emotion fear upon the mind which then leads to destruction of the physical condition.