Morning journal and courier., 1886-04-05
The Complex Sense of Touch.


 Of all the senses we possess the sense of | touch is at once the most complex and the least understood. Blindness and deafness are only too common, and we can all more or less appreciate the nature and extent of these dire affiictions. But who ever thinks how he would be affected by deprivation of the capacity to feel, inability to distinguish by touch between smoothness and roughness heat and cold, or by an impaired power to receive the various sensations of pain and pleasure which reach us through the surface of the body? How is it that the same fn- ger which tells us that substance is hard or soft tells us also that it is hot or cold? Have we, as some physiologsts aver, a sixth sense that of temperature? If not, how comes it that single touch of the finger conveys to the brain, in the same instant, two distinct impressions, perhaps three, for the substance in question may be wet, as well hot cold, hard or soft? Psychologists cannot tell us; they only know that the sensations so conveyed are separable, and that the ways by which they reach the brain are not the same. The subject is by means new, but fresh light has lately been thrown on it by the researches of two Swiss savants, M. A. Herzen and Professor Soret. The observa- tions of these gentlemen, besides being high ly interesting, psychologieally well physiologieally, are of considerable practical importance in their relation to the training of the blind.
 
 we fall asleep lying on one of our arms-if continued for some time, makes it more or less numb. It gradually loses the power of transmitting sensations to the brain. Ac- cording to the observations of M. HerZen the first sense lost is that of touch the sec ond that of cold, the third that of pain, the last that of heat. He says that when one of his arms is so torpid that he has to feel for it with the other, and it is impervious to pinch or prick, it is still sensible to the warmth of the other hand If the pressure be prolonged the limb ceases to be affected even by heat. There are people, otherwise healthy, whose capacity of feeling is so far incomplete that they never know what it is to be cold so far sensations conveyed to the skin are concerned. Winter is the same to them summer. This probably arises from an abnormal condition of the spinal cord. M. Herzen mentions the of an old woman whose legs, partially paralyzed, could feel only pain and cold. At her a 5 topsy it was found that the spinal cord in the neighborhood of the nervous centers of the back was shriveled and otherwise in an unhealthy state. But NJ. Herzen has not rested content with observations on his own species; he has made experiments on the lower animals, classified several of the sen sations of touch, and discovered their locali zations in the organism; and Professor Soret, taking up the psychological branch of the subject, has tried to find out how far the sense of touch may be made to convey to the sightless an idea of the beautiful. For as deaf musician may enjoy music, despite his deafness, so may blind man find pleasure in beauty of form, notwithstanding his blind ness. In the one case the pleasure comes from the rhythm, or rather from sonorous vibrations in the air, produced by the play ing; in the other from the symmetry and regularity of the object handled.
 "When music is going on I feel something here" said to M. Soret deaf-mute who en- joyed operas, putting his hand on his sto- mach. The blind, even those born blind, as Professor Soret has ascertained by inquiries among the inmates of the Blind Asylum of l Lausanne, have the same love of symmetry the deaf. The girl embroiderers attach l much importance to the perfect regularity of | the designs which they are required to re- 1 peat in their work. The basketmakers in- | sist on the willsw withes they use being all l straight and of the same length. Solutions | of continuity in the things they handle are, to the blind, indications Of ugliness. They | like evenness of surface, regularity If shape; | cracked pot, a rough table or broken l chair causes them positive discomfort But | to create in the mind of a person born blind 1 an artistic idea involves a measure of psy- biological development which is very difficult l to impart, and requires from both teacher 1 and scholar great patience and long sustained l effort.