Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. II

by Erasmus Darwin

[6]. Sensus caloris acrior. Acuter sense of heat occurs in some diseases, and that even when the perceptible heat does not appear greater than natural to the hand of another person. See Class [I. 1. 2]. See Sect. XIV. 8. All the above increased actions of our organs of sense separately or jointly accompany some fevers, and some epileptic diseases; the patients complaining of the perception of the least light, noises in their ears, bad smells in the room, and bad tastes in their mouths, with soreness, numbness, and other uneasy feels, and with disagreeable sensations of general or partial heat.

[7]. Sensus extensionis acrior. Acuter sense of extension. The sense of extension was spoken of in Sect. XIV. 7. and XXXII. 4. The defect of distention in the arterial system is accompanied with faintness; and its excess with sensations of fulness, or weight, or pressure. This however refers only to the vascular muscles, which are distended by their appropriated fluids; but the longitudinal muscles are also affected by different quantities of extension, and become violently painful by the excess of it.

These pains of muscles and of membranes are generally divided into acute and dull pains. The former are generally owing to increase of extension, as in pricking the skin with a needle; and the latter generally to defect of extension, as in cold head-aches; but if the edge of a knife, or point of a pin, be gradually pressed against the fibres of muscles or membranes, there would seem to be three states or stages of this extension of the fibres; which have acquired names according to the degree or kind of sensation produced by the extension of them; these are 1. titillation or tickling. 2. itching, and the 3. smarting; as described below. See Sect. XIV. 9.

[8]. Titillatio. Tickling is a pleasureable pain of the sense of extension above mentioned, and therefore excites laughter; as described in Sect. XXXIV. 1. 4. The tickling of the nostrils, which precedes the efforts of sneezing, is owing to the increased irritation occasioned by external stimulus; and is attended with a pleasureable sensation in consequence of the increased action of the part. When this action is exerted in a greater degree, the sensation becomes painful, and the convulsion of sneezing ensues; as the pain in tickling the soles of the feet of children is relieved by laughter.

A lady after a bruise on her nose by a fall was affected with incessant sneezing, and relieved by snuffing starch up her nostrils. Perpetual sneezings in the measles, and in catarrhs from cold, are owing to the stimulus of the saline part of the mucous effusion on the membrane of the nostrils. See Class [II. 1. 1. 3].

[9]. Pruritus. Itching seems to be a greater degree of titillation, and to be owing to the stimulus of some acrid material, as the matter of the itch; or of the herpes on the scrotum, and about the anus; or from those universal eruptions, which attend some elderly people, who have drank much vinous spirit. It occurs also, when inflammations are declining, as in the healing of blisters, or in the cure of ophthalmia, as the action of the vessels is yet so great as to produce sensation; which, like the titillations that occasion laughter, is perpetually changing from pleasure to pain.

When the natural efforts of scratching do not relieve the pain of itching, it sometimes increases so as to induce convulsions and madness. As in the furor uterinus, and satyriasis, and in the sphincter ani and scrotum. See Class [II. 1. 4. 14]. [IV. 2. 2. 6].

M. M. Warm bath. Fomentation. Alcohol externally. Poultice. Oiled silk. Mercurial ointments on small surfaces at once. See Class [II. 1. 4. 12]. Solutions of lead on small surfaces at once.

[10]. Dolor urens. Smarting follows the edge of a knife in making a wound, and seems to be owing to the distention of a part of a fibre, till it breaks. A smarting of the skin is liable to affect the scars left by herpes or shingles; and the callous parts of the bottoms of the feet; and around the bases of corns on the toes; and frequently extends after sciatica along the outside of the thigh, and of the leg, and part of the foot. All these may be owing to the stimulus of extension, by blood or serum being forced into vessels nearly coalesced.

M. M. Emplastrum de minio put like a bandage on the part. Warm fomentation. Oil and camphor rubbed on the part. Oil-silk covering. A blister on the part. Ether, or alcohol, suffered to evaporate on the part.