Heredity of the Sensor ial Qualities. 37 



is a universal language into which the other senses, which are 

 special languages, would at first have to be translated in order to 

 be understood. In this fundamental sense, which is at once the 

 most essential and the most material, we distinguish tactile sensa- 

 tions, properly so-called (hardness, softness, elasticity, etc.), and 

 sensations of temperature (heat and cold). Both are governed by 

 heredity. 



The extreme difference of tactile sensibility between northern 

 and southern races has often been remarked. Among the latter 

 it is exquisite and refined ; among the former, obtuse, or, at least, 

 imperfect. The Lapp, who "takes tobacco oil for colic, has a skin 

 as little irritable as his stomach. In Lapland, as Montesquieu 

 puts it, ' you must flay a man to make him feel/ 



It has been observed, says P. Lucas, that parents transmit to 

 their children the most singular perfections and imperfections of 

 touch. There are, probably, in the skin no modes of hyper-aesthesia 

 or of anaesthesia that could form an exception to this rule. A 

 woman whose tactile sensibility was so exalted that for her the 

 slightest hurt was an agony, married a man endowed in the highest 

 degree with the opposite quality. He did not lack intelligence, 

 but his heart and his skin were impassible. A daughter was born 

 to them, and she is as insensible to external pain as her father 

 himself. We have seen her endure without complaint, and even 

 without appearing to notice it, pain which would have been very 

 acute for ourselves. 



A family from the South, says the same author, who was 

 acquainted with the persons, came to Paris some time ago. 

 Several of the children were born in Paris; but those born 

 there, as well as those brought there from the South, were in 

 childhood extremely sensitive to cold. One of the daughters 

 married a man from the North, who is insensible to cold, pro- 

 vided it is not excessive. The child born of this union is more 

 sensitive to cold than even its mother ; like her, he shivers at the 

 slightest fall of temperature, and so soon as the air becomes cold, 

 he is afraid of leaving the house. 



One of the most familiar forms of hyper-aesthesia of the touch 

 is the sensibility to tickling. There are whole families that are 

 insensible to this, while others are so sensible to it that the slightest 

 touch will produce syncope. 



