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I am Luciano Sposato, stroke neurologist
and Head of the Stroke Program at London Health Sciences Center,
Western University London, Canada.
I will be talking about stroke induced heart injury.
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These are my disclosures.
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I will start talking about the story of Hans Staden,
who was on a Spanish expedition to Brazil when his ship wrecked.
It was captured by the Tupinambas.
A tribe ready known in Europe because of being cannibals.
He was smart enough to survive though,
and when he came back to Europe,
he was able to compile a narrative of his capture.
One of the most interesting aspects of his story is that he observed
that when people were sentenced by the so-called Medicine Man,
they died within a few days.
Death was apparently induced or triggered just by being sentenced by the Medicine Man.
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Similar stories were brought from the Arunta Tribe in Australia,
where during the ceremony of bone pointing,
the wizard uttered curses in a low tone
and victims sickened and died within a month or so.
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These stories inspired Dr. Walter Cannon to
develop the hypothesis or the theory about fight or flight response.
He thought that when humans or animals in general
faced stress for situations in which they are at risk,
they trigger a response of
sympathetic-adrenal system motivation that
leads to several other pathophysiological events,
including increased blood clotting or massive release
of adrenalin that at the end causes heart damage
he described as "voodoo death" based on the history of the stories
of people dying in these tribes just by being sentenced by the Medicine Man.
