The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    THE DISORDERS OF SPEECH. The third, a boy oi' nine, had a bit of apple put into his mouth, after his eyes had been blindfolded and his nostrils closed. He chewed it, and said immediately, It is an apple. (Although the nostrils were closed, it is of course quite possible that some of the flavour of the apple may have reached the Schneiderian membrane by the posterior nares.) The fourth, a boy of ten, having been blindfolded, had an apple put into his hands. When asked what it was, he said, after having felt it for a moment, It is an apple. Hitherto, in the experiments, the mind had promptly come to a correct conclusion from the information supplied to it by the sense appealed to. But now we proceeded to make an appeal to the sense of Hearing, which is much less frequently called upon to receive impressions from apples than any of the other senses. As was to be expected, we found that the conclusion arrived at by the mind from the evidence of sound was not so often correct. We made the sound by paring an apple with a table-knife near the ear of the person experimented upon, after his eyes had been blindfolded and his nostrils closed. Sixteen persons in all, mostly adults, were tried in this fashion, and of the whole number only three answered correctly, You are paring an apple. The others thought we were paring wood, clipping paper with scissors, rub- bing salt, rubbing two surfaces of cloth together, etc. Lastly, I have frequently had occasion to observe that the Muscular Sense has made itself familiar with one of the proper- ties of an apple, viz., its weight. I have in my possession a beau- tiful imitation-apple, made of some heavy metal, but painted on the surface in excellent imitation of a Newtown pippin. With the eye alone, no one can tell that it is not an apple, but when I ask a friend if he has seen this new variety of apple, it is in- teresting to watch how, in all good faith, he prepares to examine it, and how instantly he detects the deception when the object is put into his hand. From the information given by the eye. the mind thinks it is an apple; but this conclusion is at once flatly contra- dicted by the evidence furnished by the muscular sense. Now I think such little experiments are helpful, when we are trying to realize the relations between sense-impressions and ideas. As I have already indicated, it is now generally held that the primary and most simple idea we form of a thing—say, an apple—