less, and the sorrow-stricken, and so, in a measure, relieve the consequent bodily suffering. When the harper David had played and sung to him, the distressed "Saul was refreshed and was well." In advising music as a remedy for melancholy, Burton said that "it hath been prescribed to exhilarate a sorrowful heart, to divert those fixed and intent cares and meditations which, in this malady, so much offend. . . Music has also been suggested

as a lullaby to soothe the auditive sense of the dying as exemplified in the case of Henry IV.:

"Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;
Unless some dull and favorable hand

Will whisper music to my weary spirit."

And in the case of Queen Catherine,

"Cause the musicians play me that sad note
I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating
On that celestial harmony I go to."

There is another kind of music-weird, loud, and boisterous-which has anything but a quieting effect and is suited to a disorder requiring for its cure the greatest bodily activity. It is said to have been very successfully employed, during the sixteenth century and later, in the southern part of Italy. This peculiar music was resorted to when an individual was stung by a tarantula, and was played in such measure as to compel him to dance until he fell down exhausted and covered with sweat. The cure was effected purely by the quick elimination of the

venom chiefly through the sweat-glands, but was believed by the people to be due to the magical character of the music. Those who have heard the tarantella well played, fully comprehend what its effect must have been on the mind of an ignorant and superstitious peasantry.

Theophrastes asserted that skilfully modulated notes upon the flute would cure those bitten by vipers, and Democritus made the same statement. However, they did not suggest that such musical sounds had excited the bitten persons to active movements, as in dancing.

It does not seem necessary to enter into further particulars respecting the cultivation of the visual and auditive senses because surely the listeners will fill the deficiences of the foregoing merely suggestive remarks, and will supply abundant examples illustrative of methods of procedure to effect the desired object.

The closely related tactile, olfactive, and gustative senses, grouped together for the convenient discussion of their cultivation, will be the subject of the next conference.

VIII

TACTION, OLFACTION, AND GUSTATION

The tactile sense-Its nature and diffusion-All the other senses modifications of touch-Sensitive apprehension, sensibility, and sensation; their signification-The achievements of man through cultivation of the sense of touch-Some of the modes of culture of direct and of mediate taction-Olfaction culture -The olfactive cells-The specialization of odors-The game of perfumes-Taste culture-The seat of gustation-The five savors-The concurrence of the tactile and olfactive senses essential to perfect gustation.

EACH section of this conference will contain a brief statement of anatomic peculiarities a right conception of which is essential to the adaptation of certain modes of culture of these several senses.

The tactile sense, perhaps more than any of the others, needs the earliest cultivation. It is brought into requisition with such great frequency, and is so closely associated with the rest, that without its intervention they would be of little use. Its powers are well shown in those cases where the other senses have been destroyed.

By touch, hard, soft, rough, smooth, we do discern: "By touch, sweet pleasure and sharp pain we try," said the sixteenth century poet Sir John Davies. He could go no farther than to declare charmingly these simple facts, owing to the state of knowledge in his time. But

even to this day no entirely satisfactory explanation is given of the nature of the power of discrimination by mere touch of the hard from the soft, the rough from the smooth, the pleasing from the painful. If to the touch corpuscles there be accessory organs for the specialisation of these different conditions they, as yet, are undiscovered. There are, however, under the skin and elsewhere, little bodies endowed with the faculty of receiving impressions of weight and pressure. The other cutaneous impressions, such as those of the sensation of cold or heat, of pleasure or pain, are in the category of general sensibility.

Modern teachers are generally agreed that the tactile sense, like the other four, is seated in an apparatus containing among its organs one which is endowed with a special sensibility that does not exist elsewhere, and that this organ is the receiver of certain impressions; its nervetrunks being the transmitters of these impressions to a particular brain center and diffused to cause a general sensation of pleasure or displeasure. Thus teachers restrict, to the five senses, the application of the word sense which is the faculty of sensitive apprehension; of the word sensibility, general or special, to the susceptibility to impression upon the sensory nerves; and of the word sensation to the impression made on any part of the sensitive organism; taction, vision, audition, olfaction, and gustation being each the function of its special apparatus.

The thinker who asserted that "all the senses are but modifications of touch," thought not in vain, for, the rays of light touch the eye to excite vision, the waves of sound

carrying air touch the ear-drum to cause its vibration and ⚫ compel audition, the fumes of odorous things touch the olfactive membrane to assure smell, and the savory particles of food touch the gustative bulbs to effect taste. Surely, therefore, Wallace's expressed thought is in accord with Creech's dictum-borrowed from Lucretius' verse: Tangere enim aut tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res—that "nothing but body can be touched or touch"; sunlight, air, fumes, and savory particles being all material bodies that touch and are touched. Without touch-that impelling stroke, that first tap which set matter in motion-the other senses would be absolutely inoperative.

Although each sense apparatus derives its name from its function, it contains, besides the organ of special sensibility, other organs which are endowed with the faculty of distinguishing particular properties of different objects; as in the case of the sense of vision with lenses for its adjustment, with its sensitive diaphram the iris, its purple pigment, its retinal rods and cones for the determination and regulation of the quality and quantity of light admitted in the eye, and the discrimination of colors; as in the case of the sense of smell with peculiar cells in the yellow region of the nasal mucous membrane for the characterization of odors; as in the case of the sense of taste with its supplementary tactile organs for the distinction of consistence, pungency, and temperature; as in the case of the sense of hearing with its several organs for the appreciation of the direction, distance, and modulations of sounds; and, lastly, as in the case of the sense