

48 DISEASES CLASS I. 1. 5. 6. 



excite our attention: hence our own pressure on the parts, we 

 rest upon, becomes uneasy with universal soreness. 



M. M. Soft feather-bed. Combed wool put under the patients^ 

 which rolls under them, as they turn, and thus prevents their fric- 

 tion against the sheets. Drawers of soft leather. Plasters of 

 cerate with calamy. 



6. Sensus colons acrior. Acuter sense of heat occurs in some 

 diseases, and that even when the perceptible heat does not appear 

 greater than natural to the hand of another person. See Class I. 

 1. 2. See Sect. XIV. 8. All the above increased actions of our 

 organs of sense separately or jointly accompany some fevers, and 

 some epileptic diseases; the patients complaining of the percep- 

 tion of the least light, noises in their ears, bad smells in the room, 

 and bad tastes in their mouths, with soreness, numbness, and 

 other uneasy feels, and with disagreeable sensations of general or 

 partial heat. 



7. Sensus extensionis acrior. Acuter sense of extension. The 

 sense of extension was spoken of in Sect. XIV. 7. and XXXII. 4. 

 The defect of distention in the arterial system is accompanied 

 with faintness; and its excess with sensations of fulness, or weight, 

 or pressure. This however refers only to the vascular muscles, 

 which are distended by their appropriated fluids; but the longi- 

 tudinal muscles are also affected by different quantities of exten- 

 sion, and become violently painful by the excess of it. 



These pains of muscles and of membranes are generally divid- 

 ed into acute and dull pains. The former are generally owing 

 to increase of extension, as in pricking the skin with a needle; 

 and the latter generally to defect of extension, as in cold head- 

 aches; but if the edge of a knife, or point of a pin, be gradually 

 pressed against the fibres of muscles or membranes there would 

 seem to be three states or stages of this extension of the fibres; 

 which have acquired names according to the degree or kind of 

 sensation produced by the extension of them; these are, 1. titil- 

 lation or tickling; 2. itching; and the 3. smarting, as described 

 below. See Sect. XIV. 9. 



2. TitiUatio. Tickling is a pleasurable pain of the sense of 

 extension above mentioned, and therefore excites laughter; as 

 described in Sect. XXXIV. 1. 4. The tickling of the nostrils, 

 which precedes the efforts of sneezing, is owing to the increased 

 irritation occasioned by external stimulus; and is attended with 

 a pleasurable sensation in consequence of the increased action of 

 the part. When this action is exerted in a greater degree, the 

 sensation becomes painful, and the convulsion of sneezing ensues; 

 as the pain in tickling the soles of the feet of children is relieved 

 by laughter. 



