I called at your house about three weeks since, and heard that you were
away for the whole month, which I much regretted, as I wished to have had
the pleasure of seeing you, of asking you a question, and of thanking you
for your kindness to my son George. You did not quite understand the last
note which I wrote to you--viz., about Bell's precise statement that the
conjunctiva of an infant or young child becomes gorged with blood when the
eyes are forcibly opened during a screaming fit. (464/2. Sir C. Bell's
statement in his "Anatomy of Expression" (1844, page 106) is quoted in the
"Expression of the Emotions," page 158.) I have carefully kept your
previous note, in which you spoke doubtfully about Bell's statement. I
intended in my former note only to express a wish that if, during your
professional work, you were led to open the eyelids of a screaming child,
you would specially observe this point about the eye showing signs of
becoming gorged with blood, which interests me extremely. Could you ask
any one to observe this for me in an eye-dispensary or hospital? But I now
have to beg you kindly to consider one other question at any time when you
have half an hour's leisure.

When a man coughs violently from choking or retches violently, even when he
yawns, and when he laughs violently, tears come into the eyes. Now, in all
these cases I observe that the orbicularis muscle is more or less
spasmodically contracted, as also in the crying of a child. So, again,
when the muscles of the abdomen contract violently in a propelling manner,
and the breath is, I think, always held, as during the evacuation of a very
costive man, and as (I hear) with a woman during severe labour-pains, the
orbicularis contracts, and tears come into the eyes. Sir J.E. Tennant
states that tears roll down the cheeks of elephants when screaming and
trumpeting at first being captured; accordingly I went to the Zoological
Gardens, and the keeper made two elephants trumpet, and when they did this
violently the orbicularis was invariably plainly contracted. Hence I am