SENSATION. 39 



I had conjured up swiftly disappeared, but no spirit could have more 

 amazed the man, so real did it seem." * 



Now the apparent position of the lost extremity varies. 

 Often the foot seems on the ground, or follows the position 

 of the artificial foot, where one is used. Sometimes where 

 the arm is lost the elbow will seem bent, and the hand in a 

 fixed position on the breast. Sometimes, again, the position 

 is non-natural, and the hand will seem to bud straight out 

 of the shoulder, or the foot to be on the same level with the 

 knee of the remaining leg. Sometimes, again, the position 

 is vague ; and sometimes it is ambiguous, as in another 

 patient of Dr. Weir Mitchell's who 



"lost his leg at the age of eleven, and remembers that the foot by 

 degrees approached, and at last reached the knee. When he began to 

 wear an artificial leg it reassumed in time its old position, and he is 

 never at present aware of the leg as shortened, unless for some time he 

 talks and thinks of the stump, and of the missing leg, when . . . the 

 direction of attention to the part causes a feeling of discomfort, and the 

 subjective sensation of active and unpleasant movement of the toes. 

 With these feelings returns at once the delusion of the foot as being 

 placed at the knee." 



All these facts, and others like them, can easily be de- 

 scribed as if our sensations might be induced by circum- 

 stances to migrate from their original locality near the brain 

 or near the surface of the bod}^ and to appear farther off; 

 and (under different circumstances) to return again after 

 having migrated. But a little analysis of what happens 

 shows us that this description is inaccurate. 



The objectivity ivitli tvhich each of our sensations originally 

 comes to us, the roomy and spatial character ivhich is a primi- 

 tive part of its content, is not in the first instance relative to any 

 other sensation. The first time we open our eyes we get an 

 optical object which is a place, but which is not yet placed in 

 relation to any other object, nor identified with any place 

 otherwise known. It is a place with which so far we are 

 only acquainted. When later we know that this same place 

 is in 'front' of us, that only means that we have learned 

 omething about it, namely, that it is congruent loith that 



* Injuries to Nerves (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 350 ff. 



