Hygiene of nerves and mind in health and disease / by August Forel ; authorised translation from the second German edition by Herbert Austin Aikins.

  • Forel, Auguste, 1848-1931.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hygiene of nerves and mind in health and disease / by August Forel ; authorised translation from the second German edition by Herbert Austin Aikins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    makes it possible for you to make innumerable com- parisons between what is given by your different senses. When you see something, you can take hold of it in order to make sure how this something feels. When you hear something, you can go in the direction of the sound to discover its source by sight and touch. Thus movement enables you to test the perceptions of one sense by another, and to correct all sorts of errors. If one sense should deceive you, or if its perceptions are insufficient, another can correct the deficiencies. But still further, the movements call forth feel- ings and resolutions of the will. When we attend to the matter more closely we soon observe that even without the whole body chang- ing its place, most, indeed all, of our sensations and a large number of our mental activities are caused by movements of the parts of our body, or at the least by changes in the stimuli which affect our senses, as by the flight of the bird in the example given. When the body as a whole is quiet, we still move our eyes, our tongue, our hands, etc. Absolute immobility is scarcely possible, and relative stillness, as everybody knows, is one of the conditions that tend to produce sleep. But more! Every impression which con- tinues steadily for any considerable time without a change in its quality gradually ceases; or, in other words, when the intensity of the stimulus remains the same the sensation diminishes until it disappears