Volume 1
The physiological anatomy and physiology of man / by Robert Bentley Todd and William Bowman.
- Date:
- 1845-1856
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The physiological anatomy and physiology of man / by Robert Bentley Todd and William Bowman. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![OH Vl>. XIV.] Most parts of the frame have their several feelings of comfort and pleasure, of discomfort ami pain. In many of the more deeply seated organs no strong sensation is ever excited, except in the form of pain, as a warning of an unnatural condition. The inter- nal sensations of warmth and chilness, of hunger, thirst, and their opposites, of nausea, of repletion of the alimentary and genito- urinary organs, and of the relief succeeding their evacuation, of the privation of air, &c., with the bodily feelings attending strongly excited passions and emotions, may he mentioned among the principal varieties of common sensation. The special sensations are referrible to five leading forms, and are distinguished not less hy their several modes or characters, than by the more special and elaborate construction of the peri- pheral parts of their respective organs, whereby these are adapted to receive the impressions of their appropriate stimuli. The special sensations excited through the instrumentality of the peripheral organs of touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing, are primarily- designed to inform the mind of the conditions of the external world; and it is for the most part only in a secondary manner, or through the mind, that they operate on the organic functions, or for the conservation of the body. Almost all sensation is attended with the idea of locality, the mind referring the cause of the change it experiences to the peripheral part of the sensitive apparatus excited. Thus the ideas of distance, extent, and relative position originate in the very con- struction of our bodies, and soon become applied to the material objects around us by the comparison of the impressions on our dif- ferent organs, and their several parts, with one another. The abs- tract idea of space is a further conception of the mind. OF TOIX’H. This is the simplest and most rudimentary of all the special senses, and may he considered as an exalted form of common sensation, from which it rises, by imperceptible gradations, to its state of highest developement in some particular parts. It has its seat in the whole of the skin, and in certain mucous membranes, as that of the mouth, and is therefore the sense most generally diffused over the body. It is also that which exists most extensively in the animal kingdom; being, probably, never absent in any species. It is, besides, the earliest called into operation, and the least compli-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28043327_0001_0425.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
