300 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



matter exciting no comment. We continually refer to the outward 

 and usual sources of sensations, the impressions which may actually 

 be produced from within. The effect of this perfectly natural 

 method of discerning the origin of sensations becomes ludicrous in 

 practice when, through surgical circumstances over which the patient 

 has no control, a change of locality befalls the nerves in question. 

 A subjective sensation, for instance, refers pain at the extremity of 

 a stump to the portion of the limb which has been removed. A 

 patient who possesses no leg may thus feel pain in his toes. More 

 curious still are the results of the Taliacotian operation for the 

 restoration of the nose. In such a procedure, a flap of skin is 

 detached from the forehead and folded down so as to form the new 

 olfactory organ. So long as the flap remains connected with the 

 forehead, so long will the patient refer his sensations to the forehead 

 when the new nose is touched. That "things are not what they 

 seem " may thus be illustrated physiologically in a very perfect 

 fashion. Subjective sensation here refers the impression to the 

 original seat of the skin namely, the forehead although in time 

 the nose-flap adjusts its sensibility to its new position. So, also, in 

 the well-known experiment of crossing the fore and middle fingers 

 and feeling the tip of the nose with the crossed digits, the organ of 

 smell appears double. Here the surfaces of touch being altered and 

 transposed, the double sensation or illusion arises from the mind 

 referring the impression received by each finger to the natural and 

 separate position of the digits. 



Still more remarkable are certain subjective sensations pro- 

 duced by a potent belief in the existence of the conditions which 

 give rise to actual (or objective) sensations of like kind. The 

 late Professor Bennett of Edinburgh relates a case in which a 

 procurator fiscal, or public prosecutor, in Scotland attended the 

 exhumation of a body in a case of supposed murder, and had 

 to withdraw from the scene on account, as he alleged, of the over- 

 powering odour attending the procedure, and emitted, as he be- 

 lieved, by the coffin. On the latter being examined, it was found 

 to be empty ! Another case illustrates, in an equally interesting 

 fashion, the ideational and internal origin of sensations through an 

 intense belief in the real nature of the external conditions which 

 ordinarily produce them. An Edinburgh butcher, engaged in 

 placing a heavy joint of meat on a hook situated above his head, 

 slipped so that the hook appeared to penetrate his arm and to 

 suspend him thereby. Carried into a druggist's shop close at hand, 

 he was pale, well-nigh pulseless, and suffering, as he said, acute 

 agony, which was intensified on the arm being moved. When, 

 however, the arm was examined, not a trace of injury was to be 

 observed. The hook had merely penetrated the sleeve of his coat ; 



