The Kendrick gazette. [volume] (Kendrick, Idaho) 1892-1968, 1905-04-07
LIVING PICTURES IN THE EYE

LIVING PICTURES IN THE EYE
colored Images that Appear ON Lyins
Down After an Exciting Day.
There are many who will not read
lily understand what is meant by pic
lures in the eye, unless 1t be the imag-
nation, 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 probably given them little
heed, may not feel altogether sure
about the matter without a word of
explanation.
Lying in bed, after a firing or ex-
citing 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 pass
ing into complicated patterns, like
those Of the kaleidoscope, or into pref
ty landscapes quite unknown to you,
or into strange faces, now and again
very beautiful or angelic, but often MS
ugly and hideous as COLLINS from the
internal regions, or, haply, 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 ''liv-
ing pictures" of the music halls
They have the hues Of life or art, and
rival the quick change artist in their
Frotean transformations. The ami
matograph that can initiate their
ceaseless evolution, without hitch or
tremor, will be a novelty and make
the fortune Of it's inventor.
What are they7 1t is one Of the
mysteries of that marvellous nay,
miraculous, organ, the brain. We
must distinguish them from other
mysteries Of the "borderland" which
lies between the adjoining states of
wideawake and sound asleep.
They are not the images Of reverie
or day dream. Whether we recall
the past in our waking hours, or in
vent new incidents like novelist, VIC
can govern them to some extent, and
are quite aware of their fanciful or
mental character. They are not au
hallucination, in the proper sense Of
the term. We feel they are sub.
jective, or within us; we suppose
them in the eye itself, whereas we
believe an halluclnation ia objective,
or without us. An apparition or spec
ter that we take for a reality is ali
hallucination. The ghost of Hamlet's
father, witnessed by several persons,
and the spook Of his distant brother,
seen by Lord Broughanl, were prob
ably Authorizations of ''telepathic''
order. The picture of Millais, where
a man starts up and sees a luminous
lady at the foot Of his bed, is a case
Of hallucinaton. The dream image
of the undergraduate, who dreamed
that he was chased by a green figure,
and awaking, saw 1t in his room, was
also an hallucination.
/ Pictures in the eye are more akin
to what are called latter images" A
gentleman "a doctor, If we are moi
mistakenly, after fatiguing day, was
cheered by the sight Of a beefsteak
for his dinner, as he very well might
but seemingly the steak made a deep
impression on his mind or his diges.
ton, for while he was browsing, with
his eyes closed, after eating 1t, he saw
it again as wildly as before, and OH
dropping asleep he saw It a third time
in his dream. 1t was doubtless a sub.
stantial steak, not ghost, and yet II
haunted him.
There is, Of course, more than one
theory Of these living pictures in tha
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 1t. Another ID
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 n
combination Of both views. Recent OBJ
servatiohs Of M. Yves Delage have
put the question to experimental
proof. When we look at a bright
body, for example, the sun, and shut
our eyes, we see a colored spot of
light, and II we move the eye up or
down, to right or left, the spot moves
with 1t. 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 also will move with the
eye, and this is what M. Delage has
found. Nevertheless, the brain also
comes into play in forming them.
Merely Suggestion.
"And now" said Mrs. Chatterton,
after handing her husband one-sided
heart-to-heart talk Of thlrty-seven min
utes' duration, II am going to the
dentists to have tooth filed"
every we'll. my DEAR" reJoined the
1patient but long-suffering freight payer
of the combine, land wish you would
have him I'LL the rest Of your mouth
while he is at It,"
Was tho Chief Entertainer.
bragg was telling me at the politi.
cal mass meeting last night that his
grandfather died very suddenly on the
platform at a great public gathering.