Readings : The Special Senses

Hygienic Physiology: with Special Reference to the Use of Alcoholic Drinks and Narcotics
by Joel Dorman Steele, Ph.D.

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An Educated Sense of Touch. - Laura Dewey Bridgman, teacher in the Perkins Institute for the Blind, South Boston, lost her sight, hearing, and sense of smell, when she was two years of age. At the age of eight years she was taken to the institution where she yet remains. At this time, by following her mother around the house she had become familiar with home appointments, and by feeling her mother's hands and arms had also learned to sew and knit. When she first became an inmate of the Perkins Institute, she was bewildered by her strange surroundings, but after she had become used to place and people, through her one and only sense, her education was carefully begun. Through indomitable effort on the part of her preceptor, she was taught to write, read, and spell, by means of her fingers, and therefore to exchange sentiments with her teachers and with others skilled in the mysterious language of the blind and the mute.

She is now as proficient in the ordinary branches of learning as is the average person, possessed of all the senses. Her studies include geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history, and philosophy. She makes her own clothing, can run a sewing machine, and observes great neatness in her dress and the arrangements of her room. Her character is religious, and she has great success as a teacher. Not long since, she celebrated, on the same day, her fifty-eighth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of her entrance to the Perkins Institute. During her earlier years, it was her practice to keep a journal, and she now has about forty manuscript books of her own making. She has also written three autobiographical sketches, several poems, and is an accomplished correspondent. When Miss Bridgman expresses pleasure, she clasps her hands and smiles. So keen and refined are her sensibilities, that it is said she can, in a small way, appreciate the beauty of music by means of the sound vibrations on the floor. - Mrs. George Archibald.

The Nose.

The Anatomy of the Nose. - Probably most of us look upon the nose as a double hole in the head, by which we get, with more or less acuteness, a sense of smell, and through which we occasionally breathe. The intricate mechanism, and the skillful adaptation of means to end, which, in common with the other organs of special sense, it exhibits, naturally do not reveal themselves to any but the students of anatomy and physiology. Its fourteen bones are probably better hidden than any other fourteen bones of the body, and assist in converting what would otherwise be a mere channel of communication, into a series of cavities designed and adapted for particular purposes. The arch of four bones which forms the bridge of the nose, and which is of such strength as to enable the gymnast of the circus to perform the feat of supporting with it a man on a ladder, is pieced on with cartilage to form the nostrils, through which the nose communicates with the outer air. Similar openings behind connect it with the upper and posterior parts of the mouth. The space between these anterior and posterior openings makes a large chamber, divided by a vertical wall into halves, each of which is still further separated into three irregular cavities by three bones, called spongy, from the porosity and delicacy of their texture.

The ceiling of these chambers is formed by a bone of the thinness of paper, upon which lies the front part of the brain, - a fact the Egyptians made use of in embalming their corpses, easily crushing this bone, and extracting the brain through the nostrils. This bone is called cribriform (sieve-like), because it is perforated by many minute holes, through which, from the olfactory bulbs (specialized parts of the brain in which is resident the capacity of smell) that rest on its upper surface, issue the delicate filaments of the olfactory nerves, to spread themselves over the lining membrane of the two upper spongy bones. It is in the upper chambers of the nose, therefore, that the function of smell is performed; the nerves that supply the lower spongy bone being entirely unconnected with the organs of smell. Over these latter, however, sweep in and out the currents of air when the act of respiration is properly carried out, and it is these that are especially concerned in its abnormal performance. Usually but a very little of the volume of air that traverses the lower chamber of the nose has any influence upon its upper regions; and therefore, when our attention is attracted by an odor, we sniff, in order to bring a larger quantity of air into contact with the higher parts of the nose, or olfactory cavities, where odors are perceived.

But the half has not been told of the anatomical and physiological arrangements of the nose. By minute openings its chambers have communication with many other parts of the head, - with the hollow that forms the greater part of the cheek bone; with the eye by a minute spout that carries off the lachrymal secretion, unless the tears are so abundant as to roll down the cheeks; with the front of the roof of the mouth; with the abundant cells of the bone that makes the forehead, and the congestion of whose lining membrane probably accounts for the severe headache that so often accompanies and aggravates a "cold in the head." The gateway to the inner air passages, its abundant surfaces raise the air inspired to the temperature of the body, supply it with the moisture it lacks, and sift from it more or less of the mechanical impurities with which the atmosphere of our houses and shops is laden. - Maurice D. Clarke, M.d., Popular Science News, April, 1888.

Smell Necessary to Taste. - What we are in the habit of calling a "taste," is in most cases a compound of smell, taste, temperature, and touch - these four sensations ranking in gastronomic importance in the order in which they are here named....Amusing experiments may be made, showing that without the sense of smell it is commonly quite impossible to distinguish between different articles of food and drink. Blindfold a person and make him clasp his nose tightly, then put successively into his mouth small pieces of beef, mutton, veal, and pork, and it is safe to predict that he will not be able to tell one morsel from another. The same result will be obtained with chicken, turkey, and duck; with pieces of almond, walnut, and hazel-nut; with slices of apple, peach, and pear; or with different kinds of cheese, if care be taken that such kinds are chosen as do not, by their peculiar composition, betray their identity through the nerves of touch in the mouth.