The blot upon the brain : studies in history and psychology.

  • William Wotherspoon Ireland
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The blot upon the brain : studies in history and psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    of a scene of carnage. The patient is terrified, and her face expresses on the right side fear, and on the left the satisfaction derived from the contemplation of the rural scene. Then we are told that, by speaking into each ear, the patient is induced by the operator to describe the scene of blood, or of country life, while each side of the face preserves the expression corres- ponding to the hallucinations she continues to see. The author tells us that photographic coj)ies of these double expressions of physiognomy were taken. It is to be hoped that the interest of the subject will justify the translation of another passage :— Simultaneous illusions and hallucinations of sight and hearing, —It is easy to produce in a hypnotised person hallucinations of sight on one side, and hallucinations of hearing on the opposite side. All that is needed is to describe an agreeable picture in the left ear, and to imitate the noise of firing in the right. Immediately the right side of the face expresses fright, while the left side still continues to express satisfaction. There exists, then, simultaneously in the brain two halkicinations of a different nature, excited by sounds applied to each ear, each hallucination occupying a difierent hemisiDhere. Otherwise, it would be difficult to compreliend the opposite contrac- tions of the face in connection with each of the hallucinations. As for the critic who says that the illusions and hallucinations brought on with hysterica] patients in the somnambulistic period are merely simulated by the patients submitted to these experiments, there is only one reply to make, that it is not possible for anyone, even a hysterical person, while in a waking state, suddenly to express joy on one side of the face and fear on the other. Bdrillon deduces from his ingenious experiments in hypnot- ism the following conclusions :— By certain means we can in man, at the pleasure of the mesmeriser,— 1. Suppress the psychical, motor, and sensory activity of one hemisphere of the brain. 2. Give to each hemisphere a different degree of activity. 3. The two hemispheres having an equal activity, we can create for each of them at the same time manifestations vary- ing in their seat, their nature, and their character. That is to say, the same individual may in the hypnotised