The herald., 1896-02-21
HOW OUR SENSES TRICK US

In a hospital ward you often see man
wiping of things. defending himself, CATCH
ing things for hours together. There is
really nothing to wipe off, to catch or to
protect himself from. He is suffering from
hallucinations. These are the hallucina-
tions of people who are ill; but people in
the best of health and perfectly sane suffer
also, and many Illustrious persons have
seen the strangest things when nothing was
visible to bystanders.
Napoleon used frequently to see the
rooms and halls of his house thronged
with enemies, and ho would struggle ana
shout until his friends came and sur
rounded him. Sir William Herschel saw
triangles, circles, squares and all KINDS OF
geometrical figures wherever he went. A
woman, not otherwise in the least ill, saw
for many months the images of man and
woman constantly before her. When they
disappeared she could make them reappeer
by hanging her head. If she closed the
right eye the man vanished; it she closed
the left the woman disappeared. and they
both went if she closed both eyes. Some
times the things are seen only when the
eyes are closed; and nearly everybody
goes through the experience, at one ume
or another, of being unable to sleep be-
cause of the grinning faces and other hor-
ribie specters that keep coming before his
eyes.
A magistrate once said that when a man
is drunk and knows lie is drunk, then he
is not drunk. but when he is drunk and
does not know he is drunk, then he is
drunk. In the same way, when person
who has hallucinations knows them to be
such, he is quite sane, but if he believes in
their reality, then he is insane. Yet Martin
Luther, when he threw the inkstand at the
do halt od in ha al ~ nf IA
nation. But no one would say he was IN
sane.
The sense of hearing is not SO often de-
ceived as ,he sight. But some people are.
all their life, annoyed by imaginary bells,
whistles, rumbling of wagons. etc. One
vars. Another lady begged her ueighbors
to remove loud.ticSing clock, as the noise
coming through the wall kept her awake at
night. There really was no clock in the
neighbours house.
On the line between sanity and insanity
such crowds stand. An old gentleman, a
great opera-goer and about whose perfect
sanity there was no doubt, used to be
visited by three phan'om vocalists, who
sang selections from operas In a delghtfu!
way. But another was not so fortunate,
for the noises he heard were so .rouble-
some hat lie was in the habit of placing
musical box under his pillow TO drown
tleln f1aiiuctllGliOuS Vi hSaiiDe uiS
most common in the insane.
just when dropping asleep or beginning
to awake is favorable time Tor haiiucina-
tions. And also when a person is dying.
Then the blood supply to the brain is fail.
ing, and strains of delightful music and
visions of dazzling brightness are perceived.
II Hallucinatons can be voluntarily pro-
duced sometimes. Talma, the actor, could
divest his audience of flesh and convince
himself that he was playing to a house OF
skeletons.
Blind people continne to have visions for
many years after getting blind, but those
who are born blind never have them.
A hallucina,ion is sensation caused
by nothing; an illusion is the mistaking of
one thing for another, as a sign post for q
ghost. Some weaklings fancy they are of
gigantic strength, and others, perhaps real
giants, believe they have not strength to
lold up their heads. Here the illusion af
fects the muscles. When the sense of
.ouch is affected people fancy themselves
beaten or burned, although they are not
even touched. And others, through the en-
ire loss of the power to feel, believe they
are disembodied spirits; and cone even in
ier that they no longer exist, a remarkable |
example of this occurring some time ago in
he case of soldier who believed he had
been killed in battle.-London Evening
Standard,