58 PHYSIOLOGY. 



the pleasant kind; very often variable between the pleasant 

 and the painful. Thus we can hardly say what sort of sensa- 

 tion excites the oscitatio and pandiculatio (yawning). Cough 

 and sneezing are indeed attended by a tickling or pruritus ; 

 the alvine evacuations, and those of the urine, are sometimes 

 excited by a sense of weight merely, sometimes by a sense of 

 irritation or acrimony. 



" RESTLESSNESS is a frequent attendant upon anxiety, as also 

 upon pain and pruritus ; but I consider it now as occurring 

 without either. A man is sometimes restless without being 

 able to assign any particular feeling as the cause. We perceive 

 this especially when we are disposed to sleep, but cannot; 

 where we suppose an irritation, without being able to ascertain 

 it. I would observe that our muscular fibres are liable to mo- 

 tion, of which we do not take notice. In the muscles of ani- 

 mals recently killed, there is distinctly observed a kind of pal- 

 pitation an alternate oscillation of the fibres; and such a thing 

 may go on in the living animal also. In my own leg I have seen 

 parts palpitating in different places, when the action of the 

 heart and of the pulse was steady and uniform. This was attend- 

 ed with a certain feeling of uneasiness ; and this is, if I mistake 

 not, the anxietas tibiarum, or, in vulgar language, the fidgets. 



" The motion of our muscles is also attended with uneasiness 

 under lassitude ; this may be produced by other causes than 

 labour or long exercise ; and no posture or exercise of the 

 muscles can be long continued without uneasiness. But there 

 is hardly a posture of the body in which some muscles are not 

 exercised. When a man lies on his back, some muscles are 

 employed ; still more so if he attempts to lie on his side : we 

 cannot, therefore, lie long in any one situation, without uneasi- 

 ness and shifting the posture : this, therefore, very frequently 

 is the cause of restlessness. 



" Restlessness may also depend upon compression. It is well 

 known that our parts suffer by the incumbent weight of our 

 own bodies. Soft bodies, with some degree of elasticity, will 

 obviate the effects of compression. Persons who have a soft 

 cushion of their own fat, accordingly, will bear compression 

 better than those who are emaciated. But, besides, the sensi- 

 bility of the parts may be various ; there is a state of the body 



