Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1903-06-20
PICTURES IN THE EYE
ONE OF THE MYSTERIES OF THAT
COMPLEX ORGAN, THE BRAIN.

Theories as to the Cause of the Lfv-
ing ColOred Fanciful and Chang
ing Images That Appear on Lying
Down After an Exciting Day.
There are many who will not readily
understand what is meant by pictures
in the eye, unless it be the imagination,
or minds eye," Of Hamlet, for the
power of seeing them is not conferred
on all alike. Even those who have
seen them from time to time, and prob
ably given them little heed, may not
feel altogether sure about the matter
without word of explanation.
Lying in bed, after a firing or excit-
ing day, with your eyes closed and
about to fall asleep, have you never
seen, apparently in the eyeball, spots
and streaks of colored light, changing
their forms and shifting their places?
Have you never watched them passing
into complicated patterns, like those
of the kaleidoscope, or into pretty
landscapes quite unknown to you, or
into strange faces, now and again
very beautiful or angelic, but often as
ugly and hideous as COLLINS from the
internal regions, OH, happy, into scenes
of action reminding you of the drama,
but such as you never saw in real life
or upon any stage? These pictures are
more alive than the Giving pictures
of the music halls. They have the hues
of life and art and rival the quick
change artist in their protean trans
formations. The animatograph that
can initiate their ceaSeless evolution
without a hitch or tremor will be
novelty and make the fortune of it's in
ventor.
What are they? It is one of the mys-
teries of that marvellous miracu-
lous-organ, the brain. We must dis
tinguish them from other mysteries of
the "border land' which lies between
the adjoining states of wideawake and
sound asleep.
They are not the images Of a reverie
or day dream. Whether we recall the
past in our waking hours or invent
new incidents like novelist, we can
govern them to some extent and are
quite aware of their fanciful or mental
character. They are not hallucina-
ton in the proper sense Of the term.
We feel they are subjective, or within
us; we suppose them in the eye itself,
whereas we believe hallucinatiOn is
objective, or without us. An appari-
ton or specter that we take for real
ity is a hallucination. The ghost OF
Hamlet's father, witnessed by several
persons, and the spook of his distant
brother, seen by Lord Brougham, were
probably Authorizations of a 'tele-
pathic'' order. The picture of Millais
where a man starts up and sees q
luminous lady at the foot of his bed
is a case of hallucination. The dream
image" of the undergraduate who
dreamed that he was chased by a
green figure and, awakening, saw it in
his room was also hallucination.
Pictures in the eye are more akin to
what are called latter images" A
gentleman Ga doctor, if we are not
mistaken, after a fatiguing day, was
cheered by the sight of a beefsteak for
his dinner, as he very we'll might, but
seemingly the steak made deep i'm
preston on his mind or his digestion,
for while he was browsing with his
eyes closed after eating it, he saw it
again as wildly as before, and Oh
dropping asleep he saw it a third time
in his dream. 1t was doubtless sub
stantial steak, not a ghost, and yet it
haunted him.
There is, of course, more than one
theory of these living pictures in the
eye or, as they are called in science,
"hypnogogic images One is that they
are formed on the retina of the eye
and confined to it. Another is that
they are purely mental and formed
in the cortex or bark, SO to speak, of
the cerebrum. AS often happens, the
truth appears to lie in a combination
of both views. Recent observations OF
M. Yves Delage have put the question
to experimental proof. When we look
at bright body-for example, the sun
land shut our eyes we see colored
spot of light, and if we move the eye
up or down, to right or left, the spot
moves with it. The spot, in fact, is
left by the image of the sun upon the
retina and therefore moves with it.
Now, if the hypnogOgic images are on
the retina they will also move with the
eve, and this is what M. Delage has
found. Nevertheless the brain also
comes into play in forming them.