COLOURED THINKING AND ALLIED 



CONDITIONS 



By DAVID FRASER HARRIS, M.D., D.Sc, B.Sc. (Lond.), F.R.S.E. 

 Professor of Physiology and Histology in Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S. 



There are certain persons in whom sounds are invariably and 

 inevitably associated with colours. Whether these sounds are 

 those of the human voice or the notes of various musical instru- 

 ments, they are all heard as coloured. This kind of thing is 

 known as coloured hearing ; in French audition colore'e, in 

 German Jarbiges Horen. 



The linking together of any two kinds of sensation is called 

 synesthesia ; of all the possible synsesthesise the linking of 

 colour and hearing is the commonest. A larger number of 

 persons than might be supposed are the subjects of coloured 

 hearing. As long ago as 1864 the chromatic associations of 

 one of these coloured hearers were described by Benjamin 

 Lumley (2). " I know a person," he wrote, " with whom music 

 and colours are so intimately associated that whenever this 

 person listens to a singer, a colour corresponding to his voice 

 becomes visible to his eyes; the greater the volume of the voice 

 the more distinct is the colour." This person heard Mario's 

 voice as violet, Sims Reeves' as gold-brown, Grisi's as primrose, 

 and so on. 



But there is also a small number of persons who, whether 

 they hear in colours or not, always think in colours. These 

 persons, called coloured thinkers, do not have any sensation of 

 colour when voices or notes are heard, but they invariably 

 associate some kind of colour with such things as the names of 

 the days of the week, the hours of the day, the months of the 

 year, the vowels, the consonants, etc. This faculty is coloured 

 thinking, or chromatic conception, and has been called psycho- 

 chromaesthesia. A typical coloured thinker, who will tell you, 

 for instance, that Sunday is yellow, Wednesday brown, Friday 

 black, may not experience any sensation of colour on hearing 

 the organ played or a song sung. Certain persons are indeed 



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