The skin is a shifty witness; and to get positive answers, we must
literally cross-examine it; we must go over its surface point by
point and line by line, with all sorts of mechanical and thermal and
electrical and chemical stimuli. The outcome is a little surprising;
we find only =four sensations, pressure, cold, warmth and pain=. The
organs of these sensations are dotted in a sort of irregular mosaic
all over the skin, and the intervening spaces are insensitive. The
organs of pressure, distributed over about 95% of the bodily surface,
are nerve-skeins twined about the roots of the hairs; on the hairless
areas of the body, we find the nerve-skein by itself. The organ of pain
is probably a little brush-like bunch of nerve-fibrils just below the
epidermis. The organs of warmth and cold are certainly distinct; the
sensations are not degrees of one sensation, as the thermometer might
lead us to suppose; but the precise nature of their nerve-endings has
not yet been made out.
You may easily find pressure spots by fastening a short horsehair with
sealing-wax at right angles to the end of a match, and applying the
horsehair point to the back of the hand above a hair-bulb, that is,
just to windward of the issuing hair; dot the horsehair about, here
and there, till the sensation flashes up. You may find cold spots by
passing the blunt point of a lead pencil slowly across the closed
eyelid. Warm spots are more difficult to demonstrate. For pain, take
the shaft of a pin loosely between finger and thumb of the right hand,
and bring the point down sharply on the back of the left hand; you get
two sensations; the first is a pressure, the second—which pricks or
stings—is a pain.
As a rule, these organs are not stimulated separately but in
groups. Itch, for instance, is due to the light stimulation of a
field of pain-endings, and superficial tickle to that of a field of
pressure-organs. The experience of =heat=, curiously enough, is a blend
of warmth and cold; there are no heat spots. It may be observed in this
way: if you apply a surface of increasing warmth to a region of the
skin which has both cold and warm spots, you feel for some time only
the warmth; but when the stimulus has reached a certain temperature,
the cold spots, suddenly and paradoxically, flash out their sensations
of cold; and the blend of warmth and of paradoxical cold is felt
as heat. Cement a smooth copper coin to a handle, and apply it at
gradually increasing temperature to the middle of the forehead just
under the hair; you will presently find the heat. Or if you cannot do
that, note the shiver of cold when you next step into an overhot bath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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