The American physician, and family assistant / by Elias Smith.

  • Smith, Elias, 1769-1846.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The American physician, and family assistant / by Elias Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    tory nerves, as to shake them, and occasion ideas of sweet, fcetid, sour and aromatic. The taste is that sensation which a]] things give to the tongue ; but some consider the palate, the upper part of the roof of the mouth, to be the in- strument of taste. The Creator seems to have established a very intimate union between the eye, the nose, and the palate, by directing branches of the same nerves to each of these parts, by which means there ex- ists all the necessary guards against pernicious food ; since, before it is admitted into the stomach, it undergoes the trial of two of the senses, and the scrutiny of the eye. Feeling is the sense by which we acquire ideas of solid, hard, hot, cold, &c. Some consider the four other senses merely as modifications of feeling. The immediate organs of feeling are the pyra- midal papillae under the skin, which are little soft, medullary, nervous prominences, lodged every where under the uttermost skin. Feeling is the most universal of our senses ; in blind persons, the defect of sight has been suppli- ed by their exquisite touch or sense of feeling.— Spiders, flies, and ants, have this sense in greater perfection than man. From these five senses, flow all our sensitive perceptions, the result of experience ; and all the various habits, qualities, passions, and powers of animals. Certain practices called instincts, not the appa- rent result of experience, appear to us to belong to some animals, contrived by some unknown means of that all-powerful Creator, whose wonderous and incomprehensible works inspire with rapture and