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In this article (reprinted from The American Anthropologist, XLIV, 1942) Dr. Cannon reviews all our information about 'voodoo death' and suggests that it does occur, caused by 'shocking emotional stress … obvious or repressed terror'. His own experiments suggest that the victim in his terror refuses food and drink and that the fear causes physiological disturbances through sympathetic hyperactivity. 'It is clear that [in animals] the rapidly fatal result is due to a persistent, excessive activity of the sympathicoadrenal system.'