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you pinch liim ; how he is convulsed when you hurt his tender 

 corn ; and how he struggles to escape from the hot plate you 

 place against his feet ; surely a man must be a brute or an 

 insensate monster to deny that those things distress him. 

 Why should your victim strive to avoid your torments if 

 he did not feel them? Why try to escape if he did not 

 suffer from remaining ? Such reasoning would have been 

 doubtless considered triumphant had the victim been deaf and 

 dumb, or incapable of telling his own sensations ; and such rea- 

 soning is even now considered conclusive when applied to the 

 lower animals ; but what said the man himself, who was 

 unquestionably the best authority on the subject. He informed 

 us that he felt no pain, or any sensation whatever, from the 

 irritants. If liis eyes were closed, he could never tell, except 

 by the shaking of the bed and his own head, that he was 

 being experimented on ; and when he looked on, so far was he 

 from being tormented, that he used to take interest, pleasure, 

 and amusement, from the odd way in which his Umbs tossed 

 themselves about, without his having anything to say in the 

 matter. 



" Now mark the sequel : the patient began at last to recover 

 sensation in his body, and with it the unenviable power of 

 feeKng pain returned; but as it did — the irritants had no 

 more their first effect — he cried out for the doctors to give 

 over, and urged them to do so by his cries, instead of the 

 body moving as before to get out of their way. 



" This case is by no means a singular one, or unparalleled 

 in the history of medicine. Dr. Hall relates many such. One 

 where the legs were retracted when the skin was pinched, or 

 the sole of the foot tickled. When a catheter was introduced 

 the penis was erected ; at the same time the legs were drawn 

 up, and the twitching of the muscles became obvious. After 

 death the spinal marrow was found to be nearly severed in the 

 neck, proving that no sensation could have been felt in the 

 body. 



