100 MAN [Chap. VIII 



Letter 465 To F. C. Donders. 



Mr. Darwin was indebted to Sir W. Bowman for an introduction to 

 Professor Donders, whose work on Sir Charles Bell's views is quoted 

 in the Expression of the Emotions^ pp. 160-62. 



Down, June 3rd [1870?]. 



I do not know how to thank you enough for the very 

 great trouble which you have taken in writing at such length, 

 and for your kind expressions towards me. I am particularly 

 obliged for the abstract with respect to Sir C. Bell's 1 views, as 

 I shall now proceed with some confidence ; but I am intensely 

 curious to read your essay in full when translated and pub- 

 lished, as I hope, in the Dublin Journal, as you speak of the 

 weak point in the case — viz., that injuries are not known 

 to follow from the gorging of the eye with blood. I may 

 mention that my son and his friend at a military academy 

 tell me that when they perform certain feats with their heads 

 downwards their faces become purple and veins distended, 

 and that they then feel an uncomfortable sensation in their 

 eyes ; but that as it is necessary for them to see, they cannot 

 protect their eyes by closing the eyelids. The companions of 

 one young man, who naturally has very prominent eyes, used 

 to laugh at him when performing such feats, and declare that 

 some day both eyes would start out of his head. 



Your essay on the physiological and anatomical relations 

 between the contraction of the orbicular muscles and the 

 secretion of tears is wonderfully clear, and has interested 

 me greatly. I had not thought about irritating substances 

 getting into the nose during vomiting ; but my clear im- 

 pression is that mere retching causes tears. I will, however, 

 try to get this point ascertained. When I reflect that in 

 vomiting (subject to the above doubt), in violent coughing 

 from choking, in yawning, violent laughter, in the violent 

 downward action of the abdominal muscle . . . and in your 



1 See Expression of the Emotions, pp. 1 58 et seq. : Sir Charles Bell's 

 view is that adopted by Darwin— viz. that the contraction of the muscles 

 round the eyes counteracts the gorging of the parts during screaming, 

 etc. The essay of Donders is, no doubt, " On the Action of the Eyelids 

 in Determination of Blood from Expiratory Effort " in Beale's Archives 

 of MediJne, Vol. V., 1870, p. 20, which is a translation of the original 

 in Dutch. 



