182 
Mr. Bell on the motions of the eye , 
eye-lids of a person during sleep or insensibility, the pupils 
will be found elevated. Whatever be the cause of this, it will 
be found that it is also the cause of the expression in sickness, 
and pain, and exhaustion, whether of body or mind : for 
then the eye-lids are relaxed and fallen, and the pupils ele- 
vated so as to be half covered by the upper eye-lid. This 
condition of the eye during its insensible unexercised state, 
we are required to explain. 
It is a fact familiar to pathologists, that when debility arises 
from affection of the brain, the influence is greatest on those 
muscles which are, in their natural condition, most under the 
command of the will. We may perceive this in the progres- 
sive stages of debility in the drunkard, when successively the 
muscles of the tongue, the eyes, the face, the limbs, become 
unmanageable ; and, under the same circumstances, the 
muscles which have a double office, as those of the chest, 
lose their voluntary motions, and retain their involuntary 
motions, the force of the arms is gone long before the action 
of breathing is affected. 
If we transfer this principle, and apply it to the muscles 
of the eye, we shall have an easy solution of the phenomena 
above enumerated. The recti are voluntary muscles, and 
they suffer debility before the oblique muscles are touched by 
the same condition ; and the oblique muscles prevailing, roll 
the eye. 
If it be farther asked, why does the eye roll upwards and 
inwards ? We have to recollect, that this is the natural con- 
dition of the eye, its position when the eye-lids are shut and 
the light excluded, and the recti at rest and the obliqui 
balanced. 
Although I am aware that medical histories do not often lead 
