Anger

Anger is displeasure or vexation accompanied by a passionate desire to break out in acts or words of violence against the cause of the displeasure; which should, of course, be a sentient being capable of feeling the infliction. Like most other emotions, it is accompanied by effects on the body, and in this case they are of a very marked kind. The arterial blood-vessels are highly excited; the pulse, during the paroxysm, is strong and hard, the face becomes red and swollen, the brow wrinkled, the eyes protrude, the whole body is put into commotion. The secretion of bile is excessive. In cases of violent passion, and especially in nervous persons, this excitement of the organs soon passes to the other extreme of depression; generally, this does not take place till the anger has subsided, when there follows a period of general relaxation. The original tendency to anger differs much in individuals according to temperament; but frequent giving way to it begets a habit, increases the natural tendency, and leaves its traces on the countenance. Anger is, often at least, prejudicial to health. It frequently gives rise to bile-fever, inflammation of the liver, heart, or brain, or even to mania. These effects follow immediately a fit of the passion; other evil effects come on, after a time, as the consequence of repeated paroxysms—such as paralysis, jaundice, consumption, and nervous fever. The milk of a mother or nurse in a fit of passion will cause convulsions in the child that sucks. The controlling of anger is a part of moral discipline. In a rudimentary state of society, its active exercise would seem to be a necessity; by imposing some restraint on the selfish aggressions of one individual upon another, it renders the beginnings of social co-operation and intercourse possible. See EMOTIONS; also Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).