The Temperature-sense. Its Terminal Organs.—"By this we mean our faculty of perceiving cold and warmth; and, with the help of these sensations, of perceiving temperature differences in external objects. Its organ is the whole skin, the mucous membrane of mouth and fauces, pharynx and gullet, and the entry of the nares. Direct heating or cooling of a sensory nerve may stimulate it and cause pain, but not a true temperature-sensation; hence we assume the presence of temperature end-organs. [These have not yet been ascertained anatomically. Physiologically, however, the demonstration of special spots in the skin for feeling heat and cold is one of the most interesting discoveries of recent years. If one draw a pencil-point over the palm or cheek one will notice certain spots of sudden coolness. These are the cold-spots; the heat-spots are less easy to single out. Goldscheider, Blix, and Donaldson have made minute exploration of determinate tracts of skin and found the heat-and cold-spots thick-set and permanently distinct. Between them no temperature-sensation is excited by contact with a pointed cold or hot object. Mechanical and faradic irritation also excites in these points their specific feelings respectively.]
Fig. 26.—The figure marked C P shows the cold-spots, that marked H P the heat-spots, and the middle one the hairs on a certain patch of skin on one of Goldscheider's fingers.
The feeling of temperature is relative to the state of the skin. "In a comfortable room we feel at no part of the body either heat or cold, although different parts of its surface are at different temperatures; the fingers and nose being cooler than the trunk which is covered by clothes, and this, in turn, cooler than the interior of the mouth. The temperature which a given region of the temperature-organ has (as measured by a thermometer) when it feels neither heat nor cold, is its temperature-sensation zero, and is not associated with any one objective temperature; for not only, as we have just seen, does it vary in different parts of the organ, but also on the same part from time to time. Whenever a skin-region has a temperature above its sensation-zero we feel warmth; and vice versa: the sensation is more marked the greater the difference, and the more suddenly it is produced; touching a metallic body, which conducts heat rapidly to or from the skin, causes a more marked hot or cold sensation than touching a worse conductor, as a piece of wood, of the same temperature.
"The change of temperature in the organ may be brought about by changes in the circulatory apparatus (more blood flowing through the skin warms it and less leads to its cooling), or by temperature-changes in gases, liquids, or solids in contact with it. Sometimes we fail to distinguish clearly whether the cause is external or internal; a person coming in from a windy walk often feels a room uncomfortably warm which is not really so; the exercise has accelerated his circulation and tended to warm his skin, but the moving outer air has rapidly conducted off the extra heat; on entering the house the stationary air there does this less quickly, the skin gets hot, and the cause is supposed to be oppressive heat of the room. Hence, frequently, opening windows and sitting in a draught, with its concomitant risks; whereas keeping quiet for five or ten minutes, until the circulation has returned to its normal rate, would attain the same end without danger.
"The acuteness of the temperature-sense is greatest at temperatures within a few degrees of 30° C. (86° F.); at these differences of less than 0.1° C. can be discriminated. As a means of measuring absolute temperatures, however, the skin is very unreliable, on account of the changeability of its sensation-zero. We can localize temperature-sensations much as tactile, but not so accurately."[25]
Muscular Sensation.—The sensation in the muscle itself cannot well be distinguished from that in the tendon or in its insertion. In muscular fatigue the insertions are the places most painfully felt. In muscular rheumatism, however, the whole muscle grows painful; and violent contraction such as that caused by the faradic current, or known as cramp, produces a severe and peculiar pain felt in the whole mass of muscle affected. Sachs also thought that he had demonstrated, both experimentally and anatomically, the existence of special sensory nerve-fibres, distinct from the motor fibres, in the frog's muscle. The latter end in the 'terminal plates,' the former in a network.
Great importance has been attached to the muscular sense as a factor in our perceptions, not only of weight and pressure, but of the space-relations between things generally. Our eyes and our hands, in their explorations of space, move over it and through it. It is usually supposed that without this sense of an intervening motion performed we should not perceive two seen points or two touched points to be separated by an extended interval. I am far from denying the immense participation of experiences of motion in the construction of our space-perceptions. But it is still an open question how our muscles help us in these experiences, whether by their own sensations, or by awakening sensations of motion on our skin, retina, and articular surfaces. The latter seems to me the more probable view, and the reader may be of the same opinion after reading [Chapter VI.]
Sensibility to Weight.—When we wish to estimate accurately the weight of an object we always, when possible, lift it, and so combine muscular and articular with tactile sensations. By this means we can form much better judgments.