^54 



ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 



pain in the left shoulder. Yet in both these cases we are not distinctly ac- 

 quainted with any closer connexion subsisting between the finger and the 

 jaw, or the liver and the left shoulder, than there is between these different 

 organs and any other part of the system. We may theorize upon the nature 

 of the communication, but we have no certain knowledge. 



The same fact is strikingly exemplified in the different operations of dif- 

 ferent poisons when introduced into the stomach. Thus it has been ob- 

 served by Mr. Brodie, in a valuable and ingenious paper, published in the 

 Philoso:)hicai Transactions for 1811, that the infusion of tobacco, applied 

 to any part of the alimentary canal, almost instantaneously, and apparently 

 by some other means than that of the circulation of the blood, destroys the 

 action of the heart, and consequently stops the pulsation, while the brain, 

 and the other muscles of the system, besides the heart, are comparatively 

 but little affected : and that alcohol, on the contrary, the essential oil of 

 almonds, and the juice of aconite, destroy as rapidly the action of the brain, 

 and throw the animal into violent convulsions, laborious respiration, and 

 deadly stupor, while the heart continues its usual or nearly its usual pulsa- 

 tion, not only during the whole of the symptoms, but for some minutes after 

 death has actually taken place. The woorara, perhaps a species of ticunas, 

 with which the Indians of Guiana poison the points of their arrows, pro- 

 duces the same effect, when inserted into a wound, as aconite-juice intro- 

 duced into the stomach : it operates almost entirely upon the organ of the 

 brain, and more rapidly than it could arrive there by the course of the circu- 

 lation. The upas Antiar^ the anthiar Toxicaria of Leschenaut, on the 

 contrary, one of the most fatal vegetable poisons of the island of Java, pro- 

 duces death when inserted into a wound, not by affecting the brain, but, hke 

 the infusion of tobacco in the stomach, by destroying the action of the 

 heart. 



In like manner, the poison of the cerastes, or horned snake, though so 

 fatal in a few hours, often in a few minutes when received by a wound, 

 seems to produce little or no effect when tasted and swallowed. " It is- 

 clear," says Bruce, the poison has no activity, till through some sore or 

 wound it is admitted into circulation.* And a German physician (conti- 

 nues he) was bold enough to distil the pus or putrid matter flowing from 

 the ulcer of a person infected by the plague, and taste it afterwards without 

 bad consequences. 



Of the immediate cause or nature of this diversity of influence — this dis- 

 crepancy of action between remote organs, we know no more than we do 

 of the cause or nature of gravitation, of magnetism or electricity. It has 

 been denominated, indeed, sympathy ^fellow-feelings or consent of parts, in 

 the general language of physiological writers ; and so long as we employ 

 these terms merely to import a definite kind or peculiarity of impulse, they 

 may have their use and convenience ; but they convey no knowledge, and 

 ought not to be allowed, as I am afraid they sometimes are, to supply the 

 place of knowledge. That the muscles of the jawbone sometimes asso- 

 ciate in their action with the muscles of the hand or foot ; the organ of the 

 left shoulder with that of the liver ; and the stomach, under some kinds of 

 stimulus with the brain ; under others, with the heart ; and under a third 

 sort, as all those that excite nausea, with the skin ; while the skin, in return, 

 associates very generally with the action of the kidneys, are ascertained and 

 well-estabUshed fact s ; but why they should be facts, or by what power oi 

 medium the association is maintained, we are altogether ignorant 



* Appendix to Trayels, p. 391, Byo. edit. 



