In violent coughing especially when a person is half-choked, the face becomes purple, the veins distended, the orbicular muscles strongly contracted, and tears run down the cheeks. Even after a fit of ordinary coughing, almost every one has to wipe his eyes. In violent vomiting or retching, as I have myself experienced and seen in others, the orbicular muscles are strongly contracted, and tears sometimes flow freely down the cheeks. It has been suggested to me that this may be due to irritating matter being injected into the nostrils, and causing by reflex action the secretion of tears. Accordingly I asked one of my informants, a surgeon, to attend to the effects of retching when nothing was thrown up from the stomach; and, by an odd coincidence, he himself suffered the next morning from an attack of retching, and three days subsequently observed a lady under a similar attack; and he is certain that in neither case an atom of matter was ejected from the stomach; yet the orbicular muscles were strongly contracted, and tears freely secreted. I can also speak positively to the energetic contraction of these same muscles round the eyes, and to the coincident free secretion of tears, when the abdominal muscles act with unusual force in a downward direction on the intestinal canal. Yawning commences with a deep inspiration, followed by a long and forcible expiration; and at the same time almost all the muscles of the body are strongly contracted, including those round the eyes. During this act tears are often secreted, and I have seen them even rolling down the cheeks. I have frequently observed that when persons scratch some point which itches intolerably, they forcibly close their eyelids; but they do not, as I believe, first draw a deep breath and then expel it with force; and I have never noticed that the eyes then become filled with tears; but I am not prepared to assert that this does not occur. The forcible closure of the eyelids is, perhaps, merely a part of that general action by which almost all the muscles of the body are at the same time rendered rigid. It is quite different from the gentle closure of the eyes which often accompanies, as Gratiolet remarks,[619] the smelling a delicious odour, or the tasting a delicious morsel, and which probably originates in the desire to shut out any disturbing impression through the eyes.