COINAGES OF THE BRAIN. 30! 



yet his subjective sensations referring the injury to his arm were so 

 real that the pallor and shock were as typically represented as if he 

 had really been transfixed. 



A still more remarkable instance of the paramount influence of 

 subjective sensation in determining effects which would result from 

 real or objective impressions is witnessed in the death of the surgical 

 patient from fright as he lay on the operating- table, when Mr. Listen 

 had merely happened to trace the line of incision with his finger. 

 And the imaginative person who in the early days of plate-glass 

 windows caught a severe cold from sitting, as he thought, at an open 

 window his eye being deceived by the want of divisions in the 

 glass likewise illustrated the power of subjective impressions. 



From the normal creations of the brain in healthy existence we 

 pass by a gradual transition to those cases of subjective sensations 

 which appear as the result of some abnormal action of the brain, 

 and which therefore bring us to the borderland or neutral territory 

 between the domain of the sane and that of the insane. The sense 

 which appears to be most frequently subject to illusions or subjective 

 sensations is that of hearing. That actual injury will produce specific 

 derangement of this and other senses is a perfectly well-known fact 

 of physiology. A person, after a fall from his horse in which he had 

 sustained some brain-injury, was conscious until his death which 

 occurred some years thereafter of a bad odour. In another case 

 of similar nature, one of the membranes of the brain was found 

 diseased after death. Dr. Maudsley tells us in his " Pathology of 

 Mind " of an old gentleman " who, perfectly intelligent in other 

 respects, believed that offensive odours emanated from his body to 

 such a degree as to cause great distress to all who were brought near 

 him in his business, which," adds the author, " he nevertheless con- 

 ducted with skill and judgment." This person declared that his 

 next-door neighbours were greatly annoyed, and that even cab -horses 

 suffered from his presence. He slept so many hours in one room, 

 changing his bedroom during the night to avoid the concentration of 

 the poisonous odour ; yet during this period his business-partner 

 had not observed any one irrational feature in his conduct. Ulti- 

 mately he recovered from a somewhat serious illness, with the result 

 of being at the same time cured of his illusion. 



The well-known historical case of Nicolai, the Academician and 

 bookseller of Berlin, read by himself before the Royal Society of 

 that city in 1799, presents us with a most typical instance of the 

 apparent reality of subjective sensations, arising from some alienation 

 of the sense of sight. After a period of mental disquietude conse- 

 quent upon a quarrel, Nicolai began to see various figures which he 

 was conscious were but illusory in nature. There appeared to him 

 the figure of a deceased person, which stood about ten yards off, 



