286 



SENSE OF TOUCH. 



underneath, it that receive the impressions which, carried to 

 the brain, gi?e us sensations of touch (and allied sensations 

 to be considered soon). 



It would be out of place to try to go into this matter fully 

 here. Some branching nerves end in the epidermis. In some 

 of the papillae are oval bodies in which nerve fibers end. 

 Underneath the skin some nerve fibers end in little bodies 

 shaped like a grain of wheat. Pressure on the skin affects 

 these nerve endings, and starts impulses that pass along the 

 sensor fibers to some nerve center, 

 probably in the spinal cord, spinal 

 bulb, or brain. 



These "Touch corpuscles" are 

 not regarded as essential for pro- 

 ducing the sensation of touch, but 

 some nerve endings in the skin do 

 seem necessary ; for if a nerve fiber 

 be touched, not at the end, but some- 

 where along its course, we get, not a 

 sensation of touch, but a sensation of 

 pain. Except in the mouth and nose, 

 we get little, if any, sense of touch 

 from any organ but the skin. The lin- 

 ing of the digestive tube and the internal organs generally are 

 devoid of this sense. Compare Fig. 86 with Figs. 50 and 51. 

 The Sense of Touch. Of the special senses the most 

 general is that of Touch, Seeing and hearing, taste and 

 smell, belong to very limited parts of the outside of the body, 

 but we have the power of feeling all over the surface of the 

 body. ' 



Not only is the sense of touch the most general in being 

 distributed over the whole of the body, but it is the most 

 widely distributed sense throughout the animal kingdom. As 



Fig. 86. Papilla of Shin with 

 Touch Corpuscle. 



