Braille

“ Vining explain more fully the American symbols.
In geometry my chief difficulty was that I had always been accustomed to read the propositions in line print, or to have them spelled into my hand; and somehow, although the propositions were right before me, I found the braille confusing, and could not fix clearly in my mind what I was reading. But when I took up algebra I had a harder time still. The signs, which I had so lately learned, and which I thought I knew, perplexed me. Besides, I could not see what I wrote on my typewriter. I had always done my work in braille or in my head. Mr. ”

“ How small are the things that you sometimes feel with the point of the finger! As you pass it over a smooth surface, the slightest roughness is felt. A great deal of knowledge, as I told you in Chapter XIV., gets into your mind through the tips of your fingers. Messages are going from them continually by the nerves to the mind in the brain. The blind, I have told you, read with their fingers. They pass them over raised letters, and the nerves of the fingers tell the mind what the letters are, just as the nerves of your eyes are now telling your mind what the letters are in this book. ”

“ The intelligence and all the special senses, except the sense of touch already spoken of, are gathered together compactly in the head, where they are carefully protected with bony tissue. Covering the brain is the skull or cranium, which is made up of eight bones, the frontal, the occipital, two parietal, two temporal, the sphenoid, and the ethmoid, while the bones of the face are fourteen in number, two nasal, two superior maxillary, two lachrymal, two malar, two palate, two inferior turbinated, the vomer, and the inferior maxillary. ”

“ It is possible that the necessary varieties of pressure, or more accurately, "touch," which are requisite to a soulful performance, may be more readily accomplished with the tips of the fingers, owing to a greater concentration of nerve matter there than at the side of the thumb, but this we must leave to physiologists; those whose ear is so delicately formed that they notice these slight varieties in tone colour, will perhaps be thankful for the hint whereby a soulful manner of fingering and phrasing in the high positions may be acquired. ”

“ Nevertheless the hand is correctly recognised as the active organ of feeling; and by the delicately sensitive and well-trained fingers impressions are promptly conveyed to the brain and to the mind, relative to the qualities of all bodies within reach of the unfailing test of touch. In hearing and seeing the dual organs are in constant co-operation, and the injury of either involves a loss of power. But though we have two hands sensitive to all external impressions, only one of them is habitually recognised as the active agent of the brain ”

“ If brain and nerves are practically identical, is it not plain that, instead of being confined to the cavity of the skull, there is not any part of the surface of the body that can be touched by a pin's point without pricking the brain? It shows, moreover, I think, that all the sensations generally received through the other physical organs of sense may be received through the touch at the tips of the fingers. ”

“ That the nervous tissue of the cerebrum should be thus the instrument of the mind need not surprise us when we think how the muscles and joints of the tumbler, the vocal organs of the singer, the finger-ends of the watchmaker; the palate of the tea-taster, grow to the uses they are steadily put to; and, much more, both in the case of the brain and all other organs, grow to the uses they are earliest put to. ”

“ And few have the most dim notion of the complexity of the organ of vision in man, or of the amazing difficulties of 'Biologos' in fashioning and perfecting it. Millions of finger tips are bunched together in the one-inch cup of the eyeball, from whence run about 425,000 nerve fibrils to a topographic mechanism of sensation in the occipital lobe. ”

“ MODERN investigations have shown us that certain parts of the brain, situated in the region of the temples, have a predominant share in the formation of articulate language; or, to express it in a short phrase, that the majority of men speak by means of the third frontal circumvolution of the left cerebral hemisphere. All who have occupied themselves a little with physiology know also that the nervous fibers cross each other in the brain, so that the movements of the left arm are commanded by the right hemisphere, while those of the right arm depend on the left hemisphere. ”

“ Thus the eye is the end-organ of sight, and is a wonderfully complex arrangement of nerve structure combined with refracting media, and arranged to respond to the rapid ether waves of light. The ear has43 for its essential part the specialized endings of the auditory nerve, and is fitted to respond to the waves carried to it in the air, giving the sensation of sound. The end-organs of touch, found in greatest perfection in the finger tips, are of several kinds, all very complicated in structure. ”

“ The optic nerve, the retina and the visual centers of the brain are as passive as the finger-nail. They have nothing whatever in their structure that makes it possible for them to do anything, and when they are the subject of effort from outside sources their efficiency is always impaired. ”

“ In the head itself we must distinguish the cranium from the face. The first encloses the brain, whence proceed the organs of sense, with the exception of those of touch, properly speaking. Above all, it is the seat of intelligence ”

“ We must judge of heads then from their shape, and from the processes which arise from them: from their shape, if well formed, for that is always a good sign; and from the processes of the brain, if they be in their proper state, and if the nervous parts be all properly nourished, have their suitable tone, and if the sight be acute. Sharp heads are defective in the protuberance of the front or hind-head, or else it is unnaturally increased. ”

“ Every muscle, every point on the skin, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, every several organ which we possess, has its own special spot on the surface of the brain, somewhere above or behind the ear. Each half of the body is charted on one side of the brain, a spot in one for each spot in the other. ”

“ If the eye had been attached to the top of the head, or the ear to the nape of the neck, or the mouth to the back of the body, or if three fingers had been given instead of four, it is plain to a person of intelligence that the existing advantages would not have been secured, and the present beauty of form and appearance would have been imperfect. ”

“ Whilst we shall contend the eye takes the lead in expression, we must admit the other features (especially the mouth) bear the stamp of passions, of genius, of intelligence, and incapacity; and it is the brain, acting through the nerves, which animates the muscles of the nose and the mouth. For ourselves, we insist, the eye only expresses by dictation of the brain, and, indeed, is the brain. ”

“ Even the cave men show that right-handedness was the rule in their time, and spear-hand, shield-hand, gesture-language, digital-counting, and the tally-stick, the world over, fixed the speech and writing and right-hand brain-centers in the left half-brain—and, of course, those of the left-hand and fingers in the right half-brain. ”

“ The increase of the necessary differentiation of bodily and mental function by the coordination of associated cerebral centers has resulted in a general right-handedness, right-eyedness, etc., the data by vision, audition, and for action of the right leg and foot for associated function, compelling a location of all these centers in the same left-brain and closely linked with the determining faculty of speech and writing. ”

“ But we who have to use these brains to think and remember with, as well as to see and hear and feel with, and to control our muscles, have chosen to do this thinking and remembering with the spot on the left side of the head which corresponds to the muscles of the lips and mouth and tongue, and to the eyes and ears and the right hand. Thus we have everything convenient, all in one small spot on one side of our heads, where we can get at everything with the least trouble. But what the front part of the brain is for, is something that nobody knows much about. ”

“ Some parts of the head we use for other purposes, as the mouth to eat and speak with, and the nose to smell and breathe with. The part we think with is inside of the skull, safely placed in a little room at the top and back part of the head. Do you remember the name of this organ which fills the hollow place inside of the skull? We learned some time ago that it is called the brain. It is with the brain that we study and remember and reason. So the brain is one of the most important organs in our body, and we must try to learn all we can about it. ”

“ Hold your right hand before a mirror, and you will see in the mirror a left hand. Your right glove will produce its mate in the glass. For you could never use the reflexion of your right glove, if it were present to you as a real thing, for covering your right hand, but only for covering your left. Similarly, your right ear will give as its reflexion a left ear; and you will at once perceive that the left half of your body could very easily be substituted for the reflexion of your right half. ”

“ It presides over what we call our thoughts, our will, and our sensations. A large part of the area of the outer layer of the cerebrum seems to be given over to some one of the different functions of speech, hearing, sight, touch, movements of bodily parts. The movement of the smallest part of the body appears to have its definite localized center in the cerebrum. ”

“ When you put your left elbow on the table and lean your head on your hand, your hand just about covers the only portion of the brain with which you ever do any thinking at all; while only with the part that lies directly under the middle of the palm, and is as I have said, about the size of a silver dollar, do you ordinarily think very much or hard. ”

“ Hold a light to it, and you will find that the iris will contract and diminish the pupil; withdraw the light, and the iris will relax, and the pupil expand, thus regulating the amount of light. The images of external objects are formed upon the retina of the eye, a thin membrane, spread out upon the extremity of a large nerve, which proceeds immediately to the brain, and forms the telegraphic cord by which information is given to the mind, of everything visible going on within the range of sight. ”

“ In the brain there are apparently special centers which receive the sensations from any one part of the body and which send back to that part the motor impulse. Thus there is a center for the arm, the hand, the fingers, another for the ear, another for the eye. Language has its special centers. This is the localization of functions in the brain. At birth these centers are undeveloped. In a right-handed child the language centers develop in the left hemisphere, and in the left-handed child in the right hemisphere. ”

“ When we see the finger the whole time, we usually put it in the line joining object and left eye if it be the left finger, joining object and right eye if it be the right finger. Microscopists, marksmen, or persons one of whose eyes is much better than the other, almost always refer directions to a single eye, as may be seen by the position of the shadow on their face when they point at a candle-flame. ”

“ Four organs of the body—the eye, the ear, the larynx, and the heart—are noticed in appropriate places. The eye is compared with the camera, the larynx with a reed pipe, the heart with a pump, while the ear fitly opens the chapter on acoustics. The reader who is unacquainted with physiology will thus be enabled to appreciate the better these marvellous devices, far more marvellous, by reason of their absolutely automatic action, than any creation of human hands. ”

“ One patient whose visual memory was very imperfect found that if she traced an imaginary black letter on the ball of her thumb with her forefinger, she could follow the imaginary lines with her mind as they were being formed and retain a picture of the letter better than when she gained the impression of it through the sense of sight. ”

“ Our ideas are movements of the nerves of sense, as of the optic nerve in recollecting visible ideas, suppose of a triangular piece of ivory. The fine moving fibres of the retina act in a manner to which I give the name of white; and this action is confined to a defined part of it; to which figure I give the name of triangle. And it is a preceding pleasurable sensation existing in my mind, which occasions me to produce this particular motion of the retina, when no triangle is present. ”

“ If we contemplate the interior of a skull, we shall at once perceive that the inner table has every where penetrated as far as it could into the recesses which open on the surface of the brain. Every convolution has hollowed out its corresponding mould in the vitreous table ”

“ When the finger's ends have been hardened by labor, or from any cause, the lips and tongue are the most sensitive, and are often used in threading needles, stringing beads, etc, very innocent uses surely to put the tongue to. This sense of touch is of necessity cultivated by the blind until it often reaches a state of perfection seldom, if ever, found in the seeing. ”

“ When in the dark I lay my hand on a surface, or grasp a ball of three inches diameter, in either case the same parts of the hand receive the impression: but out of the different contraction of the hand in the two cases my Understanding constructs the form of the body whose contact caused the feeling, and confirms its construction by leading me to move my hand over the body. If one born blind handles a cubical body, the sensations of his hand are quite uniform on all sides and in all directions,—only the corners press upon a smaller part of his skin. ”