Degeneration / by Max Nordau.

  • Nordau, Max Simon, 1849-1923.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Degeneration / by Max Nordau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    insensitive parts are not connected, but are scattered in isolated spots over the entire retina. Then the sufferer will have all sorts of gaps in his field of vision, producing strange eff-ects, and if he paints what he sees, he will be inclined to place in juxtaposition larger or smaller points or spots which are com- pletely or partially dissociated. The insensitiveness need not be complete, and may exist only in the case of single colours, or of ail. If the sensitiveness is completely lost (' achroma- topsy ') he then sees everything in a uniform gray, but perceives differences in the degree of lustre. Hence the picture of nature presents itself to him as a copper-plate or a pencil drawing, where the effect of the absent colours is replaced by differences in the intensity of light, by greater or less depth and power of the white and black portions. Painters who are insensitive to colour will naturally have a predilection for neutral-toned painting; and a public suffering from the same malady will find nothing objectionable in falsely-coloured pictures. But if, besides the whitewash of a Puvis de Chavannes, obliterating all colours equally, fanatics are found for the screaming yellow, blue, and red of a Besnard, this also has a cause, revealed to us by clinical science. * Yellow and blue,' Gilles dela Tourette* teaches us, ' are peripheral colours' {i.e., they are seen with the outerxTiOst parts of the retina) ; ' they are, therefore, the last to be perceived' (if the sensitiveness for the remaining colours is destroyed). 'These are . . . the very two colours the sensations of which in hysterical ambl3'opia [dulness of vision] endure the longest. In many cases, however, it is the red, and not the blue, which vanishes last.' Red has also another peculiarity explanatory of the predilec- tion shown for it by the hysterical. The experiments of Binett have established that the impressions conveyed to the brain by the sensory nerves exercise an important influence on the species and strength of the excitation distributed by the brain to the motor nerves. Many sense-impressions operate enervatingly and inhibitively on the movements ; others, on the contrary, make these more powerful, rapid and active ; they are ' dyna- mogenGus,' or ' force-producing.' As a feeling of pleasure is always connected with dynamogeny, or the production of force, every living thing, therefore, instinctively seeks for dynamo- genous sense-impressions, and avoids enervating and inhibitive ones. Now, red is especially dynamogenous. ' When,' says Binet,J in a report of an experiment on a female hysterical subject who was paralyzed in one half of her body, ' we place a dynamo- * Traite clmique et iMrapeiitique de VHysteric., p. 339. See also Drs. A. Marie et J. Bonnet, La Vision chez les Idiots et les Imbeciles. Paris, 1892. t Alfred Binet, ' Recherches sur les Alterations de la Conscience chez les Hysteriques,' Revuephilosophique, 1889, vol. xxvii. X Op. cit.., p. 150.