Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Erasmus Darwin
page 30 of 633 (04%)
page 30 of 633 (04%)
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has also lost the ideas of them; though the organs of speech still retain
somewhat of their usual habits of articulation. This observation may throw some light on the medical treatment of deaf people; as it may be learnt from their dreams whether the auditory nerve be paralytic, or their deafness be owing to some defect of the external organ. It rarely happens that the immediate organ of vision is perfectly destroyed. The most frequent causes of blindness are occasioned by defects of the external organ, as in cataracts and obfuscations of the cornea. But I have had the opportunity of conversing with two men, who had been some years blind; one of them had a complete gutta serena, and the other had lost the whole substance of his eyes. They both told me that they did not remember to have ever dreamt of visible objects, since the total loss of their sight. V. Another method of discovering that our ideas are animal motions of the organs of sense, is from considering the great analogy they bear to the motions of the larger muscles of the body. In the following articles it will appear that they are originally excited into action by the irritation of external objects like our muscles; are associated together like our muscular motions; act in similar time with them; are fatigued by continued exertion like them; and that the organs of sense are subject to inflammation, numbness, palsy, convulsion, and the defects of old age, in the same manner as the muscular fibres. 1. All our perceptions or ideas of external objects are universally allowed to have been originally excited by the stimulus of those external objects; and it will be shewn in a succeeding section, that it is probable that all our muscular motions, as well those that are become voluntary as those of |
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