2006 Heart-Brain summit proceedings

‘Voodoo’ death revisited:
The modern lessons of neurocardiology

Martin A. Samuels, MD, DSc (hon), FAAN, MACP*

Neurologist-in-Chief and Chairman
Department of Neurology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Professor of Neurology
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA

msamuels@partners.org

ARTICLE INTRODUCTION

In 1942, Walter Bradford Cannon published a remarkable paper entitled “‘Voodoo’ Death,” in which he recounted anecdotal experiences, largely from the anthropology literature, of death from fright. These events, drawn from widely disparate parts of the world, had several features in common. They were all induced by an absolute belief that an external force, such as a wizard or medicine man, could, at will, cause demise and that the victim himself had no power to alter this course.
This perceived lack of control over a powerful external force is the sine qua non for all the cases recounted by Cannon, who postulated that death was caused “by a lasting and intense action of the sympathico- adrenal system.” Cannon believed that this phenomenon was limited to soct, that they feel themselves bewildered strangers in a hostile world. Instead of knowledge, they have fertile and unrestricted imaginations which fill their environment with all manner of evil spirits capable of affecting their lives disastrously.”

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