I may here mention a trifling observation, as it will serve to sum up
our present subject. An old lady with a comfortable but absorbed
expression sat nearly opposite to me in a railway carriage. Whilst I
was looking at her, I saw that her _depressores anguli oris_ became
very slightly, yet decidedly, contracted; but as her countenance
remained as placid as ever, I reflected how meaningless was this
contraction, and how easily one might be deceived. The thought had
hardly occurred to me when I saw that her eyes suddenly became suffused
with tears almost to overflowing, and her whole countenance fell. There
could now be no doubt that some painful recollection, perhaps that of a
long-lost child, was passing through her mind. As soon as her sensorium
was thus affected, certain nerve-cells from long habit instantly
transmitted an order to all the respiratory muscles, and to those round
the mouth, to prepare for a fit of crying. But the order was
countermanded by the will, or rather by a later acquired habit, and all
the muscles were obedient, excepting in a slight degree the
_depressores anguli oris_. The mouth was not even opened; the
respiration was not hurried; and no muscle was affected except those
which draw down the corners of the mouth.
As soon as the mouth of this lady began, involuntarily and
unconsciously on her part, to assume the proper form for a crying-fit,
we may feel almost sure that some nerve-influence would have been
transmitted through the long accustomed channels to the various
respiratory muscles, as well as to those round the eyes, and to the
vaso-motor centre which governs the supply of blood sent to the
lacrymal glands. Of this latter fact we have indeed clear evidence in
her eyes becoming slightly suffused with tears; and we can understand
this, as the lacrymal glands are less under the control of the will
than the facial muscles. No doubt there existed at the same time some
tendency in the muscles round the eyes at contract, as if for the sake
of protecting them from being gorged with blood, but this contraction
was completely overmastered, and her brow remained unruffled. Had the
pyramidal, corrugator, and orbicular muscles been as little obedient to
the will, as they are in many persons, they would have been slightly
acted on; and then the central fasciae of the frontal muscle would have
contracted in antagonism, and her eyebrows would have become oblique,
with rectangular furrows on her forehead. Her countenance would then
have expressed still more plainly than it did a state of dejection, or
rather one of grief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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