■!■

THE TOUCH.

335

purges, and other things which evacuate bile. What is called anidorous taste, arising from putrid humours, is corrected by thejuice of citrons, oranges, and other acids. A salt taste is cured bya plentiful dilution with watery liquors. An acid taste is destroy-ed by absorbents, and alkaline salts, as powder of oyster-shells,salt of wormwood, &c.

When the sensibility of the nerves, which supply the organs oftaste, is diminished, the chewing of horse-radish, or other stimulat-ing substances, will help to recover it.

Of the Touch.

The sense of touching may be hurt by any thing that obstructsthe nervous influence, or prevents its being regularly conveyed tothe organs of touching ; as pressure, extreme cold, &c. It mavlikewise be hurt by too great a degree of sensibility, when thenerve is not sufficiently covered by the cuticle or scarf-skin, orwhere there is too great a tension of it, or it is too delicate.Whatever disorders the functions of the brain and nerves, hurtsthe sense of touching. Hence it appears to proceed from the samegeneral causes as palsy and apoplexy, and requires nearly thesame mode of treatment.

In a stupor, or defect of touching, which arises from an obstruc-tion of the cutaneous nerves, the patient must first be purged ;afterwards sucVi medicines as excite the action of the nerves, orstimulate the system, may be used. For this purpose the spirit ofhartshorn, sal volatile oleosum, horse-radish, &c. may be taken in-ward/7 ? tne disordered parts, at the same time, may be frequently-rubbed with fresh nettles, or spirit of sal ammoniac. Blistering-plasters and sinapisms applied to the parts will likewise be of use,as also warm bathing, especially in the natural hot baths.

In a work like this which is wholly designed for popular in-struction, it would have been a useless display of anatomical skillto mention such disorders of the senses as admit of no remedy, be-cause they are owing to a defect in the organization or structureof the brain, whence the nerves, those fine organs of sensation,take their rise. But it may be proper to make a few remarks onone or two general causes of nervous weakness, and of consequentdebility or imperfection of the senses, which proceed wholly fromour own misconduct.

Nothing so much relaxes the nervous system, so much blunt?the acuteness of every sense, and destroys its energy, as intemper-ance. To say of a man when drunk, that he Aas lost Ms setises, isliterally true in the most comprehensive meaning of the word.He can neither see, hear, taste, smell, nor feel, with exactness ;and though he may flatter himself that with the return of sobriety,he recovers his senses also, yet they become more and more im-paired by every debauch, till frequent repetitions of the frantic in-dulgence consign him to blindness, to deafness, and to the graveExcess in eating produces similar effects, and, like the touch of thetorpedo, benumbs every faculty. It particularly vitiates the tasteand smell, and thus defeats the chief purposes for which thesesenses were given, to inform us of the wholesome or noxious prop-erties of every thing we eat and drink.

*