"…One terrible reality—I can hardly term it a fancy even now—that came to me again and again, was so painful that it must, I fear, always be a vividly remembered agony….I died, as I believed, although by a strange double consciousness I knew that I should again reanimate the body I had left. In leaving it I did not soar away, as one delights to think of the freed spirits soaring….I sank, an intangible, impalpable shape, through the bed, the floors, the cellar, the earth, down, down, down! Like a fragment of glass dropping through the ocean, I dropped uninterruptedly through the earth and its atmosphere, and then fell on and on forever….As time went on, and my dropping through space continued, I became filled with the most profound loneliness, and a desperate fear took hold of me that I should be thus alone for evermore, and fall and fall eternally….There was, it seemed to me, a forgotten text which, if remembered, would be the spell to stop my fatal falling. I sought in my memory for it, I prayed to recall it, I fought for it madly, wrestling against the terrible fate which seemed to withhold it. Single words of it came to me in disconnected mockery, but erased themselves instantaneously. Mentally, I writhed in such hopeless agony that, in thinking of it, I wonder I could have borne such excess of emotion and lived….I began, then, without having reached any goal, to ascend. As I rose, a great and terrible voice from a vast distance pronounced my doom: 'Fall, fall, fall, to rise again in hopeless misery, and sink again in lonely agony forever.' …Then ensued a wild and terrible commingling of unsyllabled sounds, so unearthly that it is not in the power of language to fitly describe them. It was something like a mighty Niagara of shrieks and groans, combined with the fearful din and crash of thousands of battles and the thunderous roar of a stormy sea….I fought my upward way in an agony which resembled nothing so much as the terrible moment when, from strangling or suffocation, all the forces of life struggle against death, and wrestle madly for another breath. In place of the woeful sounds now reigned a deadly stillness, broken only at long but regular intervals by a loud report, as if a cannon, louder than any I ever heard on earth, were discharged at my side, almost shot into me, I might say, for the sound appeared to rend me from head to foot, and then to die away into the dark chaos about me in strange, shuddering reverberations. Even in the misery of my ascending I was filled with a dread expectancy of the cruel sound. It gave me a feeling of acute physical torture, with a lingering intensity that bodily suffering could not have. It was repeated an incredible number of times, and always with the same suffering and shock to me. At last the sound came oftener, but with less force, and I seemed again nearing the shores of time. Dimly in the far distance I saw the room I had left, myself lying still and deathlike upon the bed, and the friends watching me….Then, silently and invisibly I floated into the room, and was one with myself again.
"…'She is conscious now,' I heard one of the doctors say, and he gently lifted the lids of my eyes and looked into them. I tried my best to throw all the intelligence I could into them, and returned his look with one of recognition. But, even with my eyes fixed on his, I felt myself going again in spite of my craving to stay. I longed to implore the doctor to save me, to keep me from the unutterable anguish of falling into the vastness and vagueness of that shadowy sea of nothingness again. I clasped my hands in wild entreaty; I was shaken by horrible convulsions—so, at least, it seemed to me at the time—but, beyond a slight quivering of the fingers, no movement was discernible by the others….For five hours I remained in the same condition—short intervals of half-consciousness and then long lapses into the agonizing experiences I have described….Coming out of the last trance, I discovered that the measured rending report like the discharge of a cannon, which attended my upward way, was the throbbing of my own heart.">[
Concerning all these and other narcotics, it should never be forgotten that they are true poisons, sold with the mark of skull and crossbones, useful, like strychnine and henbane, in the hands of a skillful physician, but fraught with deadly danger when otherwise employed. Their private use is never safe. The weak and nervous invalid, who can not by hygienic means build up new strength, need never hope to gain it by surreptitiously indulging in popular narcotics. Instead, he will soon discover that he has but added to his list of ills a new and fatal one.—E. B. S.
THE SPECIAL SENSES.
AN EDUCATED SENSE OF TOUCH (p. 230).—Laura Dewey Bridgman, teacher in the Perkins Institute for the Blind, South Boston, lost her sight, hearing, and sense of smell, when she was two years of age. At the age of eight years she was taken to the institution where she yet remains. At this time, by following her mother around the house she had become familiar with home appointments, and by feeling her mother's hands and arms had also learned to sew and knit. When she first became an inmate of the Perkins Institute, she was bewildered by her strange surroundings, but after she had become used to place and people, through her one and only sense, her education was carefully begun. Through indomitable effort on the part of her preceptor, she was taught to write, read, and spell, by means of her fingers, and thus to exchange sentiments with her teachers and with others skilled in the mysterious language of the blind and the mute. She is now as proficient in the ordinary branches of learning as is the average person, possessed of all the senses. Her studies include geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history, and philosophy. She makes her own clothing, can run a sewing machine, and observes great neatness in her dress and the arrangements of her room. Her character is religious, and she has great success as a teacher. Not long since, she celebrated, on the same day, her fifty-eighth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of her entrance to the Perkins Institute. During her earlier years, it was her practice to keep a journal, and she now has about forty manuscript books of her own making. She has also written three autobiographical sketches, several poems, and is an accomplished correspondent. When Miss Bridgman expresses pleasure, she clasps her hands and smiles. So keen and refined are her sensibilities, that it is said she can, in a small way, appreciate the beauty of music by means of the sound vibrations on the floor.—MRS. GEORGE ARCHIBALD. (Laura D. Bridgman died in 1889.)
THE NOSE (p. 232).—The Anatomy of the Nose.—Probably most of us look upon the nose as a double hole in the head, by which we get, with more or less acuteness, a sense of smell, and through which we occasionally breathe. The intricate mechanism, and the skillful adaptation of means to end, which, in common with the other organs of special sense, it exhibits, naturally do not reveal themselves to any but the students of anatomy and physiology. Its fourteen bones are probably better hidden than any other fourteen bones of the body, and assist in converting what would otherwise be a mere channel of communication, into a series of cavities designed and adapted for particular purposes. The arch of four bones which forms the bridge of the nose, and which is of such strength as to enable the gymnast of the circus to perform the feat of supporting with it a man on a ladder, is pieced on with cartilage to form the nostrils, through which the nose communicates with the outer air. Similar openings behind connect it with the upper and posterior parts of the mouth. The space between these anterior and posterior openings makes a large chamber, divided by a vertical wall into halves, each of which is still further separated into three irregular cavities by three bones, called spongy, from the porosity and delicacy of their texture. The ceiling of these chambers is formed by a bone of the thinness of paper, upon which lies the front part of the brain,—a fact the Egyptians made use of in embalming their corpses, easily crushing this bone, and extracting the brain through the nostrils. This bone is called cribriform (sieve-like), because it is perforated by many minute holes, through which, from the olfactory bulbs (specialized parts of the brain in which is resident the capacity of smell) that rest on its upper surface, issue the delicate filaments of the olfactory nerves, to spread themselves over the lining membrane of the two upper spongy bones. It is in the upper chambers of the nose, therefore, that the function of smell is performed; the nerves that supply the lower spongy bone being entirely unconnected with the organs of smell. Over these latter, however, sweep in and out the currents of air when the act of respiration is properly carried out, and it is these that are especially concerned in its abnormal performance. Usually but a very little of the volume of air that traverses the lower chamber of the nose has any influence upon its upper regions; and therefore, when our attention is attracted by an odor, we sniff, in order to bring a larger quantity of air into contact with the higher parts of the nose, or olfactory cavities, where odors are perceived.
But the half has not been told of the anatomical and physiological arrangements of the nose. By minute openings its chambers have communication with many other parts of the head,—with the hollow that forms the greater part of the cheek bone; with the eye by a minute spout that carries off the lachrymal secretion, unless the tears are so abundant as to roll down the cheeks; with the front of the roof of the mouth; with the abundant cells of the bone that makes the forehead, and the congestion of whose lining membrane probably accounts for the severe headache that so often accompanies and aggravates a "cold in the head." The gateway to the inner air passages, its abundant surfaces raise the air inspired to the temperature of the body, supply it with the moisture it lacks, and sift from it more or less of the mechanical impurities with which the atmosphere of our houses and shops is laden.—MAURICE D. CLARKE, M.D., Popular Science News, April, 1888.
Smell Necessary to Taste.—What we are in the habit of calling a "taste," is in most cases a compound of smell, taste, temperature, and touch—these four sensations ranking in gastronomic importance in the order in which they are here named….Amusing experiments may be made, showing that without the sense of smell it is commonly quite impossible to distinguish between different articles of food and drink. Blindfold a person and make him clasp his nose tightly, then put successively into his mouth small pieces of beef, mutton, veal, and pork, and it is safe to predict that he will not be able to tell one morsel from another. The same result will be obtained with chicken, turkey, and duck; with pieces of almond, walnut, and hazel-nut; with slices of apple, peach, and pear; or with different kinds of cheese, if care be taken that such kinds are chosen as do not, by their peculiar composition, betray their identity through the nerves of touch in the mouth. To hold an article of food under the nose at table would be justly considered a breach of etiquette. But there is a second way of smelling, of which most people are quite unconscious, viz., by exhaling through the nose while eating and drinking….It is well known that only a small portion of the mucous membrane which lines the nostrils is the seat of the endings of the nerves of smell. In ordinary expiration, the air does not touch this olfactory region, but by a special effort it can be turned into that direction….Instinct teaches most persons while eating to guide the air, impregnated with the fragrance of the food, to a part of the nostrils different from that used during ordinary exhalation; but, being unaccustomed to psychologic analysis of their sensations, they remain quite unconscious of this proceeding, and are, indeed, in the habit of confusing their sensations of taste, smell, touch, and temperature in a most absurd manner….
In trying to ascertain by experiment how far smell, touch, and temperature enter into this compound sensation, popularly known as "taste," it is best to make use of the pungent condiments. Mustard and horse-radish, for example, have little or no taste, but reserve their pungent effect for the mucous membrane of the nose during expiration. It is an advantage to know this, for if care is taken to breathe only through the mouth, we need no longer prepare to shed tears every time we help ourselves to the mustard. The pungent quality of mustard, the fiery quality of ginger, and the cool sensation in the mouth after eating peppermint, are due to the nerves of touch and temperature, which are commonly classed as one sense, though they are quite as distinct sensations as sight and hearing, or taste and smell….
There are two ways in which the effort to extract all its fragrance from a morsel of food confers a benefit.