COLOURED THINKING AND ALLIED CONDITIONS. BY D. 

 FRASER HARRIS, M. D., D. Sc., F. R. S. E., Professor 

 of Physiology in Dalhousie University, Halifax, N. S. 



(Read 9 March, 1914.) 



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 instruments, they are all heard as coloured. This 

 kind of thing is known as coloured hearing; in French, audi- 

 tion coloree; in German, farbigts Horen. 



The linking together of any two kinds of sensation is 

 called synsesthesia; of all the possible synsesthesise, the linking 

 of colour and sound 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 psychochromsesthesia. A typical coloured thinker 



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