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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 380 



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NE"V^ YORK, Mat 16. 1890. 



No. 3S0. 



CONTENTS: 



The Cherokees in Pre-Colum- 

 bian Times. Cyrus Thomas . . . S 



Kilima-Njaro i 



Notes and News l 



Mental Science. 



Motor Expression of Ideas ; 



A New Use of Auto-Suggestion . . I 



An Interesting Case of Brain Lo- 

 calization : 



"Visualized Sounds : 



Physical and Mental Powers 1 



Health Matte'RS, 



Nose-Bleed ; 



Ground- Water and Typhus ; 



The Physiology of Taste ■. ; 



The Pre Frontal Region of the 

 Brain . ; 



Gastric Juice and Pathogenic 



Germs 303 



Caisson or Tunnel Disease 304 



The Inefficiency of Sand Filters 304 

 Letters to the Editor. 

 Census of Hallucinations 



Wm. James 304 

 The "Winnebago County (Iowa) 

 Meteorites. George F. Kunz; 

 Joseph Torrey, Jr.; Erwin H. 



Barbour 304 



Book-Reviews. 

 Die Entstehung der Arten durch 



raumliche Sonderung 305 



Electric Transmission of Energy 306 



The Economic Basis of Protection 306 



Among the Publishers 307 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 

 Motor Expression of Ideas.' 



A GREAT deal of study has lately been given to the phenomena 

 of automatism in their various and perplexing forms. There has 

 been accumulated a large number of the extreme cases in which 

 persons write down quite elaborate sentences and are unconscious 

 of doing so, and the view has been advanced that we have here 

 the minute beginnings out of which develop these peculiar cases 

 of the separation of personality into two or more egos. It is, how- 

 ever, the study of the more normal cases, in which the psycho- 

 logical factors are more easily analyzed, that seems to be promising 

 of interesting and practical results. The typical experiment 

 consists in fixing the attention of the subject in one direction, 

 placing in his hand a pencil, and observing what will result if the 

 hand holding the pencil be tempted to move. With some subjects 

 there results a very clearly written word or words reflecting what 

 ■was uppermost in their thoughts. The subject is often as sur- 

 prised as any one, having no consciousness of what he had done. 

 M. Gley, who has tried the experiment with a number of persons, 

 offers the suggestion that this motor automatism may be a part of 

 a general mental tendency. It is well known that some persons 

 do their mental representation by visual pictures, others mainly 

 by sounds, and a third variety by motor images. The last class 

 "would be represented by those "who gesticulate as they speak, who 

 think aloud as it were, who talk to themselves, and, in short, to 

 ' BuUetino de la S ciete de Psychologie Physiologique, 1889. 



whom thinking is action. It is likely that with such persons 

 thought expresses itself in action more easily than in others, and 

 hence this auionalic writing becomes related to a better under- 

 stood class of phenomena. The suggestion is capable of an ex- 

 perimental verifieation, and well deserves it. 



A New Use of Auto-Suggestion.' 



The acting-out of a suggestion imposed upon an hypnotic sub- 

 ject by the hypnotizer has been compared to the self-imposing of 

 a task or a vow. In both cases there is more or less possibility of 

 the suggestion failing to be enacted, depending largely on the 

 opposition to the normal habits and powers of the individual that 

 the suggestion arouses. This power is very different in different 

 persons, and we have a good illustration of it in the relative diffi- 

 culty different persons have of suggesting themselves to sleep at 

 night. It is si.niilarly possible to train a good hypnotic subject to 

 put himself to sleep either by imagining that the operator were 

 doing it or by observing a certain ceremony, and so on. A large 

 part of the wonderful cures so constantly brought before the pub- 

 lic may be viewed as instances of auto-suggestion. Dr. Burot has 

 shown thit this power may be utilized in oases of crime hypnoti- 

 cally sugocested. A patient v/ishing to be hypnotized oftener than 

 he could be attended to. was taught to hypnotize himself, and 

 with good success. The suggestion was given to him to commit 

 a theft, which he promptly did. Upon awakening, he forgot all 

 about it. and it was impossible to get him to acknowledge the 

 deed. He was then told to hypnotize himself for the purpose of 

 recalling the circumstances of the case. He awoke, and volun- 

 tarily told the whole story just as it happened. The same experi- 

 ment was successfully made upon other subjects; and the conclu- 

 sion drawn by Dr. Burot is, that auto-suggestion offers a safe and 

 useful method of discovering the hypnotic origin of a crime. 



An Interesting Case of Brain Localization.' 



There is in Paris a mutual autopsy society, each member of 

 which pledges his body to be dissected after his deal'h by the rest. 

 Special attention is given to the brain, and the society is composed 

 of well known scientists. In this way M. Manouvrier made a 

 careful study of the brain of M. Adolphe Bertillon, and in a 

 supplementary note calls attention to a few peculiarities of special 

 interest. It appears that M. Bertillon was deaf in the left ear, 

 and had been so from infancy. The sense of hearing having been 

 localized in the first temporal convolution, this part of the brain 

 on both sides was examined to see whether there was any differ- 

 ence in the development of the two halves of the brain. It was 

 found that while on the left side this convolution was well devel- 

 oped, with a number of slight ridges and furrows in it, on the 

 right side it was smaller and without these characteristics (the 

 centre for each ear is located in the opposite hemisphere of the 

 brain). While, of course, a single observation of this kind is far 

 from conclusive, yet the method is one promising to corroborate 

 generalizations otherwise reached, and to suggest and explain 

 peculiarities based upon the individual capabilities. 



Visualized Sounds. 



A correspondent of Nature sends an interesting account of 

 association of visual images with the sounds of musical instru- 

 ments. ' ' The sound of an oboe brings before me a white pyramid 

 or obelisk, running into a sharp point; the point becoming more 

 acute if the note is acute, blunter if it is grave. The obelisk ap- 

 pears to be sharply defined and solid if the note is loud, and vague 

 and vaporous if it is faint. All the notes of the 'cello, the 

 high notes of the bassoon, trumpet, and trombone, and the low 

 notes of the clarinet and viola, make me see a flat undulating 

 ribbon of strong white fibres. The tone of the horn brings before 

 me a succession of white circles of regularly gradated sizes, over- 

 lapping one another. These circles and the ribbon float past me 

 horizontally, but the point of the obelisk seems to come to me." 

 The. writer adds, that, though she has been accustomed to hearing 

 music all her life, these effects have been noticed only for five 

 years, in which time they have become more frequent and clearer. 

 If she is familiar with the score of a piece, these visualizations seem 

 to slightly precede the actual sounds. The images are distinctly 



