On the pupil in emotional states / by Samuel Wilks.

  • Wilks, Samuel, Sir, 1824-1911.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pupil in emotional states / by Samuel Wilks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    BRAIN. APKIL, 1883. ^rtidcs. ON THE PUPIL IN EMOTIONAL STATES. BY SAMUEL WILKS, F.R.S. There is probably no structure of tbe body so mobile or so susceptible of great changes as the iris. The pupil of the eye, by the size of which these changes are perceived, is ever enlarging or diminishing under influences of the most varied kinds. These pertain in health to the impingement of light on the retina, and to the accommodation of the eyes to focal distances ; in disease to numberless affections of the brain, spinal cord, and sympathetic system, and even to the more subtle changes which take place in the nervous system from the circulation of poisons in the blood. The pupils, too, may often be observed to react to stimuli applied to the face and neck. All these numberless causes acting on the eye are well known, but I now wish to draw attention to the changes of the iris under purely mental or emotional states. I have on several occasions whilst sitting at the bedside of patients observed a quietude come over them in which they have assumed a fixed gaze; at the same time the pupils of the eyes have become dilated, and on the patient being suddenly aroused have as quickly contracted. These patients have fallen into the state known as hypnotism, w'hich is identical apparently with that of somnambulism. The latter is not true sleep, where all the senses are for the time dead, for the somnambulist