THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 99 



the smell was imaginary or real ; and at last it faded out. 

 Everyone must be able to give instances like this from the 

 «mell-sense. When we have paid the faithless plumber for 

 pretending to mend our drains, the intellect inhibits the 

 nose from perceiving the same unaltered odor, until per- 

 haps several days go by. As regards the ventilation or 

 heating of rooms, we are apt to feel for some time as we 

 think we ought to feel. If we believe the ventilator is shut, 

 we feel the room close. On discovering it open, the oppres- 

 sion disappears. 



An extreme instance is given in the following extract : 



' ' A patient called at my office one day in a state of great excitement 

 from the effects of an offensive odor in the horse-car she had come in, 

 and which she declared had probably emanated from some very sick 

 person who must have been just carried in it. There could be no doubt 

 that something had affected her seriously, for she was very pale, with 

 nausea, difficulty in breathing, and other evidences of bodily and mental 

 distress. I succeeded, after some difficulty and time, in quieting her, 

 and she left, protesting that the smell was unlike anything she had ever 

 before experienced and was something dreadful. Leaving my office 

 .soon after, it so happened that I found her at the street-corner, waiting 

 for a car: we thus entered the car together. She immediately called 

 my attention to the same sickening odor which she had experienced in 

 the other car, and began to be affected the same as before, when I 

 pointed out to her that the smell was simply that which always emanates 

 from the straw which has been in stables. She quickly recognized it as 

 the same, when the unpleasant effects which arose while she was possessed 

 with another perception of its character at once passed away."* 



It is the same with touch. Ever^^one must have felt the 

 sensible quality change under his hand, as sudden contact 

 with something moist or hairy, in the dark, awoke a shock 

 of disgust or fear which faded into calm recognition of some 

 familiar object? Even so small a thing as a crumb of po- 

 tato on the table-cloth, which Ave pick up, thinking it a 

 crumb of bread, feels horrible for a few moments to our 

 fancy, and different from what it is. 



Weight or muscular feeling is a sensation ; yet who has 

 not heard the anecdote of some one to whom Sir Humphry 

 Davy showed the metal sodium which he had just dis- 

 covered? "Bless me, how heavy it is!" said the man; 



* C. F Taylor, Sensation and Pain, p. 37 (N. Y., 1882). 



