Page 155.
A New Zealand chief “cried like a child because the sailors spoiled his favorite cloak by powdering it with flour.” I saw in Tierra del Fuego a native who had lately lost a brother, and who alternately cried with hysterical violence, and laughed heartily at anything which amused him. With the civilized nations of Europe there is also much difference in the frequency of weeping. Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas, in some parts of the Continent, the men shed tears much more readily and freely.
The insane notoriously give way to all their emotions with little or no restraint; and I am informed by Dr. J. Crichton Browne that nothing is more characteristic of simple melancholia, even in the male sex, than a tendency to weep on the slightest occasions, or from no cause. They also weep disproportionately on the occurrence of any real cause of grief. The length of time during which some patients weep is astonishing, as well as the amount of tears which they shed.
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Page 167.
The Indian elephant is known sometimes to weep. Sir E. Tennent, in describing those which he saw captured and bound in Ceylon, says some “lay motionless on the ground, with no other indication of suffering than the tears which suffused their eyes and flowed incessantly.” Speaking of another elephant he says: “When overpowered and made fast, his grief was most affecting; his violence sank to utter prostration, and he lay on the ground, uttering choking cries, with tears trickling down his cheeks.”
THE GRIEF-MUSCLES.
Expression of the Emotions,
page 180.
With respect to the eyebrows, they may occasionally be seen to assume an oblique position in persons suffering from deep dejection or anxiety; for instance, I have observed this movement in a mother while speaking about her sick son; and it is sometimes excited by quite trifling or momentary causes of real or pretended distress. The eyebrows assume this position owing to the contraction of certain muscles (namely, the orbiculars, corrugators, and pyramidals of the nose, which together tend to lower and contract the eyebrows) being partially checked by the more powerful action of the central fasciæ of the frontal muscle. These latter fasciæ, by their contraction, raise the inner ends alone of the eyebrows; and, as the corrugators at the same time draw the eyebrows together, their inner ends become puckered into a fold or lump. The eyebrows are at the same time somewhat roughened, owing to the hairs being made to project. Dr. J. Crichton Browne has also often noticed, in melancholic patients who keep their eyebrows persistently oblique, “a peculiar acute arching of the upper eyelid.” The acute arching of the eyelids depends, I believe, on the inner end alone of the eyebrows being raised; for, when the whole eyebrow is elevated and arched, the upper eyelid follows in a slight degree the same movement.
But the most conspicuous result of the opposed contraction of the above-named muscles is exhibited by the peculiar furrows formed on the forehead. These muscles, when thus in conjoint yet opposed action, may be called, for the sake of brevity, the grief-muscles. When a person elevates his eyebrows by the contraction of the whole frontal muscle, transverse wrinkles extend across the whole breadth of the forehead; but, in the present case, the middle fasciæ alone are contracted; consequently, transverse furrows are formed across the middle part alone of the forehead. The skin over the exterior parts of both eyebrows is at the same time drawn downward and smoothed by the contraction of the outer portions of the orbicular muscles. The eyebrows are likewise brought together through the simultaneous contraction of the corrugators; and this latter action generates vertical furrows, separating the exterior and lowered part of the skin of the forehead from the central and raised part. The union of these vertical furrows with the central and transverse furrows produces a mark on the forehead which has been compared to a horseshoe; but the furrows more strictly form three sides of a quadrangle. They are often conspicuous on the foreheads of adult, or nearly adult, persons, when their eyebrows are made oblique; but with young children, owing to their skin not easily wrinkling, they are rarely seen, or mere traces of them can be detected.