The hand: its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design / by Sir Charles Bell.

  • Charles Bell
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hand: its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design / by Sir Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    own body as distinguished from tilings external to us. The first otfice of the hand, then, is to exercise the sensibility of the mouth : and the infant as certainly questions the reality of things by that test, as the dog does by its acute sense of smelling. In the infant, the sense of the lips and tongue is resigned only in favour of the sense of vision, when that sense has improved and ofters a greater gratification, and a better means of judging of the qualities of bodies. The hand very slowly acquires the sense of touch, and many ineff*ectual efforts are seen in the arms and fingers of the child ])efore the direction of objects or their distance is ascer- tained. Gradually the length of the arm, and the extent of its motions become the measure of distance, of fonn, of relation, and perhaps of time. Next in importance to the sensibility of the mouth, we may contemplate that sense which is early exhibited in the infant,^—the terror of falling. The nurse will tell us that the infant lies composed while she carries it in her arms up stairs ; but that it is agitated in carrying it down. If an infant be laid upon the arms and dandled up and down, its body and limbs will be at rest, whilst it is raised; but they will struggle and make an effort as it descends. There is here the indication of a sense, an innate feeling of o
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