ii SENSIBILITY OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS 59 



Many of the bodily feelings thus classified escape physiological 

 analysis owing to their vague and obscure character. Of others 

 we know little, and that little claims no special mention here, 

 either because it falls within the domain of common observation, or 

 because it comes into the special department of neuropathology 

 and psychiatry. We must here confine ourselves to the more 

 important physiological points that have been cleared up. 



II. Henle gave the name of "common sensation" (GemeingefilJil 

 or coenaesthesia) to "the sum, the confused chaos of the sensations 

 which are incessantly transmitted to the brain from all the parts 

 of the body." Normally we have no clear and distinct conscious- 

 ness of the functions of the internal organs and tissues, but we 

 undoubtedly have a dull and obscure knowledge of them, similar 

 to that of the sensations that provoke and accompany the 

 respiratory movements. We have in short an incessant awareness 

 of our body, which Condillac termed the "fundamental sense of 

 existence," and which is the link between psychical and physio- 

 logical life. In the state of equilibrium that constitutes perfect 

 health, this feeling is continuous, uniform, and always equal, so 

 that it remains at the threshold of consciousness, and is prevented 

 from becoming a distinct sensation with special characters and 

 specific localisation. But when it reaches a certain intensity it 

 is perceived as a vague sense of general well-being or the reverse. 

 The former, known to clinicians as euphoria, is the expression of 

 an exaltation of the physiological functions of the organs, the 

 latter of their disorder, transmitted to consciousness by the 

 cerebro-spinal sensory nerves, or by the afferent nerves of the 

 sympathetic system. 



" It is probable," Foster writes, " that sensory impulses, not of 

 the character of pain, are continually, or from time to time, passing 

 upwards from the abdominal viscera to the central nervous system. 

 These do not affect our consciousness in such a distinct manner 

 as to enable us to examine them psychologically in the same way 

 that we are able to examine special sensations such as those of 

 sight, or even sensations of pain ; they are even less well-defined 

 than those of the muscular sense ; nevertheless they do enter, though 

 obscurely, into our consciousness, so that we become aware of any 

 great change in them." 



A striking proof of the real existence of common sensation is 

 seen in the fact that in certain morbid cases it may be wholly or 

 partially suppressed. In some forms of mental disturbance, in 

 certain cases of anaesthesia or partial paralysis, the patients have 

 no sensation in one part of the body (e.g. in one limb, the stomach, 

 the brain, etc.), or from some cerebral disease sensation in one part 

 is abnormal e.g. the patient fancies he has a glass or wooden arm. 

 More rarely there is a total abolition of coenaesthesia. It is said 

 that the obstetrician Baudelocque in the last days of his life lost 



