Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian ; with 184 illustrations.
- Henry Charlton Bastian
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian ; with 184 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.
695/757 page 698
![clusively opposed to the notion of Wundt, Bain and Lewes, and to others who may hold that any part of our notions concerning degrees of ‘ resistance ’ are derived from the volitional or motor centres. A case of this kind was long ago recorded by Demeanx*, some details of which are well worthy of being cited. There was a complete loss of sensibility (both superficial and deep) in the moving member, and Demeanx says:—“ She put her muscles in action under the intiuence of her will, but she had no con- sciousness of the movements which she executed; she knew not what was the position of her arm—it was impossible for her to say wdiether it was extended or flexed. If one told the patient to raise her hand to her ear, she executed the movement immediately; but when my hand was interposed between her own and the ear, she was not conscious of it; if I stopped her arm in the midst of its movement, she did not become aware of it. If I fixed, without allowing her to be aware of it, her arm upon the bed and told her to raise the hand to her head, she strove for an instant and then became quiet, believing that she had executed the movement. If I induced her to try again, showing her that her arm had remained in the same place, she attempted to do so with more energy, and as soon as she was compelled to call into play the muscles of the opposite side [of the body], she recognized that the movement was opposed.’’ In the recent contribution of G. H. Lewes to this subject, he brings forward no new arguments against the possible exclusive adequacy of passive sensibilities, and he now largely admits them as components of the complex group of impressions resulting from movements which go to make up what is known as the ‘Muscular Sense.’ And except that he holds to the doctrine that some active sensibilities enter into the same complex, his present views are almost entirely in accordance with those expressed by the writer, in the paper above referred to. The evidence which Lewes considers favourable to the existence of an ‘ active ’ element in the ‘ muscular sense ’ endowment, can, in the writer’s opinion, be better explained by the supposition previously started, and still favoured by him, that a set of ‘ unfelt ’ impressions relating to states of tension of muscles exists—the components of which are more or less distinct from those that reveal themselves in consciousness. The writer, for instance, pointed out in 1869 that in ‘ locomotor * ‘ Des Hernies Crurales,’ Thfese de Paris, 1843, p. 100, and quoted by Perrier in his ‘Functions of the Brain,’ p. 181.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2805961x_0696.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
