Chapter 18

Application of the theory to explain the phenomena of locality in the living body

2202. Finally I must say something about locality which I have discussed only in passing. A treatise however is not warranted and would in any case be beyond me. I simply propose to attempt some kind of solution to the following problem: 'Why does the animal principle, although one and simple, manifest different effects of its action in certain places of the living body rather than in others?'

2203. The theory of locality has general principles, that is, laws which apply equally to a healthy and a sick body. This is true whether we consider the body abandoned to itself and passing through the successive stages of the zoic course unaltered by artificial stimuli, or whether we seek to determine the effects of these stimuli applied arbitrarily to a healthy or sick body. I will first discuss what I call general, physiological laws of localities. I shall then apply them to the sick body, and deduce some pathological laws from them. Finally I will apply these laws to the effects of artificial stimuli administered for the purpose of restoring a sick body to health. In doing so, I will touch upon certain therapeutic laws

.

2204. The physiological, or general, laws of localitiy are derived from the six elements constituting an animal.
The three subjective elements are 1. continuous feeling; 2. excited feeling; 3. individuated feeling.
The three corresponding extrasubjective elements are 1. continuous matter; 2. intestine movements of continuous matter; 3. the constant harmony of these movements, of which organisation is a condition.

2205. The animal principle is the active part of individuated, excited and continuous feeling, but its operation is conditioned by its term, the body. If we consider only the continuity of feeling without excitation or external stimuli, we have a fundamental feeling of uniform continuity without distinction of location or parts, and hence without shape. Measured space (extrasubjective extension) does not exist in this feeling; only the animate element, not the animal itself, exists. Locality, that is, shaped limits, arises in feeling when excitation takes place. But excitation is not harmonious and individuated except through the organisation of the body, the term of feeling.

2206. The first cause by which locality is revealed in feeling is therefore an extrasubjective principle, that is, the extrasubjective part of the organisation together with the stimulus applied to the organisation. Because all parts of the organisation are not equally felt, nor equally sensory, inequality of vital action, the cause of locality, results in these parts. The stimuli which are applied to the organisation and promote the activity of the instinct are not applied equally to all parts of the organisation but to certain determined parts. They are therefore another cause of locality.

2207. Consequently:

1. The feeling principle has a kind of sphere limited by the extension of the felt element. This sphere is itself not felt, that is, not determined in feeling as long as the feeling is uniform and continuous.

2. The action exercised by the sentient principle is proportionate to the felt element. If the quality of feeling and the degree of its intensity vary in the sphere of the felt element, the action of the sentient principle also varies proportionately in quality and quantity at the different points of the felt sphere. Although variety of feeling and instinct exist, no limits are felt and consequently no extrasubjective shapes of the different feelings are felt.

3. When foreign bodies act on the surfaces of a felt body, surface sense-experiences begin, by which the principle feels the limits and shapes of the sphere of its own felt element and simultaneously of exterior bodies.

4. When the sentient principle receives the first impulse and its first determination from stimuli, its own spontaneity continues the resulting movements. The laws of this spontaneity, which I have already indicated, may be summarised as follows:

2208. a) The spontaneous action of the sentient principle, that is, of the instinct, is proportionate to the amount of ease and pleasure the principle finds in action rather than in non-action. This law determines the quantity of action.

b) The mode of action consists in directing the entire quantity of action to perfecting the state of animality in its three elements: to extending the sphere of the felt element, to increasing excitation and to maintaining harmony and unity in feeling itself; in other words, to perfecting the organisation.

c) This tendency of the spontaneity of the sentient principle to direct its action to the perfection of the animal in its three elements (the extended, excited, harmonious felt element) can be resisted by the extrasubjective principle. In this case irritation, the cause of illness, arises. Irritation is the force itself of spontaneity, which tends essentially to make animality perfect, now directed to fighting what harms animality.

2209. The spontaneity of the feeling activity, in trying to increase feeling or reject what opposes feeling, activates all organs and carries out all those movements which can help it in this purpose. When however the effect it is seeking is local, it must set in motion the organs and the parts which occupy places different from that to which the animal activity is referred as to its proper purpose. These different parts are precisely the seat of sympathies.

2210. But because the feeling principle is always active, as the conservation and perfection of animality requires, it sometimes forms habits and becomes accustomed to moving simultaneously certain organs to obtain a given and frequently needed effect. Hence if it wants to effect something which requires only one of the many organs it normally moves together, the other organs move habitually because the simple act of the sentient principle moves several organs per modum unius (to use the scholastic phrase). But because the act with which it simultaneously moves these organs is different from that with which it would move only one organ - and different acts have to be learnt through experience - it can attain the desired effect more easily and pleasurably with an act which moves several organs, some of them uselessly, than with an act moving only the necessary organ. This is certainly the case if the sentient principle has learnt to accomplish the first, but not the second act, or can accomplish the first more easily than the second.

2211. The continuous feeling, the excited feeling, and the single harmonious feeling are three general modes of feeling, to one or other of which all variations pertain. In the same way, there are three principal activities of feeling corresponding to these modes. The excited feeling already contains continuous feeling, of which it is an exaltation; the single, harmonious feeling, which is the perfection of the excited feeling, contains both the continuous and the excited feeling. The intellective soul can be united only to the single, harmonious feeling, and through this to the excited feeling which, in its turn, provides union with the continuous feeling. All three of these feelings are present in the human being, therefore, but only the single, harmonious feeling, the foundation of animal individuality, is the object of consciousness.

2212. The relationships between these three modes of feeling can, I think, explain the locality of sense-experiences. For example, I experience pain or pleasure in one of my hands. The movement to which this local sense-experience adheres is not that limited to the nerves in the hand where the sense-experience takes place, but pertains principally to the brain, where movement is necessary if my hand is to undergo the sense-experience. Why does the sense-experience in my hand need movements in the brain which are not felt in any way? There are two questions here: 1. I cannot have a sense-experience in one of my hands pricked by a needle, unless the movement of the nerves reaches the brain; on the other hand, 2. I feel the pain in my hand, not in my brain, nor along the arm where the movement of the fibres continues. The second question is concerned with locality.

The first question has been answered elsewhere. It is sufficient here to note that the nerve movement, if interrupted and prevented from reaching the brain, would lose its unity and harmony with the whole animal feeling (if, for example, an arm had been severed from the body). As I said, the intellective soul can unite only to harmonious, single feeling, without which it cannot be conscious of any other feeling.

2213. The second question (about the locality of feeling) requires a longer explanation. Locality begins to be felt when our body is perceived as a solid, limited, shaped space. But we perceive our limited, shaped body only by means of the extrasubjective experience through which we perceive our body's surfaces. In other words, the felt element does not provide shape, place or parts to our body, but only a perceived element, that is, an extrasubjective force which makes its action felt in the felt element.

The extrasubjective experience presents the body to us in a purely phenomenal way. This anatomical body, as I called it, is quite different from the real, directly felt body (the felt element), and indeed there are disharmonies and apparent contradictions between the two.(148) Locality therefore pertains to the body perceived in an extrasubjective, phenomenal way. But after perceiving locality in this way in the extrasubjective body, we then apply it to the subjective body. In other words, we take the phenomenal, extrasubjective body as the rule of our thoughts and actions, not the real, subjective body. But how do we refer subjective sense-experiences to extrasubjective localities?

The local, anatomical body is the body we see, touch, smell, etc; it is composed of all the sense-experiences which, taken together, give us the shape of our body. This shape, and the shape of the parts,(149) constitute the image of our body which then becomes the matter for the ordinary, common idea of body, the normal basis of human reasoning and action. Locality is referred to this image-shape, which is a part of our manifold senseexperience of the external universe. Locality therefore is referred to this body perceived in our sense-experiences and contemplated in our images. The body's parts are designs formed in our external sensitivity which concurs in forming them for us, for our knowledge.

After the parts have been formed and indicated by our extrasubjective, surface sensitivity, we can refer and locate in them our non-surface, internal sense-experiences which lack discernible shape. When we say we feel a pain in our foot, we are simply locating the pain in the part called 'foot' represented to us by extrasubjective perception and enclosed by perceived surfaces giving shape to the foot. When we locate an internal senseexperience at some part of our body, we are simply perceiving the relationship between subjective, non-shaped sensitivity and shaped, extrasubjective sensitivity. If some extrasubjective, shaped sensitivity had not indicated the shape of my foot, I could not have located in it the pain I felt. I could neither express nor think the nature of the foot that caused me pain; the word 'foot' would not have been invented, nor would my mind possess the concept provided by the word and by external sensitivity.

But when I feel an internal pain, why do I locate it near the right side of my foot rather than the left? - There is no doubt that I make this judgment by comparing this sense-experience with other internal sense-experiences received in my foot. In fact, because I already have the limits of my foot which indicate its solid shape, I also have the mental concept of this solid. If I now conceive several sense-experiences in the same solid, it is obvious that I can recognise one rather than another as nearer the given extremity of the foot. All I need do is compare the different sense-experiences among themselves and with the extremity of my foot. The more sense-experiences I see as possible between the particular sense-experience and that which indicates the extremity, the longer I judge the distance between the particular sense-experience and the extremity. However, these judgments about the locality of internal sensations are uncertain, imprecise and very often mistaken. Locality therefore of internal sense-experiences is simply a relationship between them and surface sense-experiences. But how do we explain extrasubjective, surface sense- experiences?

The fact that a sense-experience extends over a surface is a consequence of the way in which, according to me, excitation is produced. Excitation arises when animal molecules rub together. Granted the impenetrability of bodies, they can do this only at the surface. However, the tiny surfaces of the molecules where excitation arises may constitute, through their juxtaposition, a single large surface. In this case, we have a large, more or less distinct, surface sensation, one example of which are the external and internal walls of the body. On the other hand, we have a confused sensation if excitation arises in a group of molecules whose small, non-continuous surfaces do not form a single surface but rub against each other on all their facets. No determined shape is discerned in this sensation, as we see in the case of so many internal feelings. Thus, because the inside of molecules is felt only with the feeling of continuity, these excited feelings offer no real, precise and distinct solid. This explains why sensible pains and pleasures inside the body are never precise and distinct relative to their continuity, shape and extension. We only need to know now how we locate our own sensible surfaces in a solid space, uniting them to form a single surface which encloses a solid possessing all the curves and prominences of the human body.

First, we must grant that unmeasured space is given by the nature of the sensitive soul.(150) Without this, no explanation can be given of our present problem or of many other facts and laws of nature. Furthermore, it must be remembered that if, while remaining motionless, we were touched simultaneously in all the points of our body, we would neither perceive our body as a solid space, nor distinguish between concave or convex curves of our surface sensation. Without actively moving, we cannot perceive any solid. Solidity enters our feeling to the same extent as active movement does.(151)

The movement of felt surfaces, which itself is felt, together with the stages through which the movement passes - stages which indicate time and comparative speeds - all make us place our own surface sense-experiences in localities determined by solid space. This is the way in which we compose for ourselves the perception of our body as a perfectly shaped solid. In carrying out this operation with which we produce for ourselves the solid, shaped perception of our body, we also measure the space of the universe, and acquire perception of shaped solids found in it. All this is done by means of sensible movement.

Granted all these products of external sensitivity, we can take a step towards solving the problem of locality. If we consider in itself alone the isolated sensation of a prick in the hand, we find that it has no locality of any sort. It is no more in the brain than in the hand, neither of which would exist for us. Only when we have perceived our body as a solid, clothed with felt surfaces, do we locate the prick in our hand, in the extremity of the nerve fibre. The process seems to be the following. We first perceive the thorn which has pierced our hand. We notice that pain arises as the thorn enters our hand. When the thorn is extracted, the pain diminishes notably, but increases when the wound is touched and ceases when it is treated. We unite the pain with the cause that produces it and the cause that removes it. But both causes are perceived by us through extrasubjective experience and have their locality determined by extrasubjective sensitivity itself.

Consequently, we assign the same place, the place of the pain's extrasubjective cause, to the pain (a subjective phenomenon). We do this easily because pain, having no locality of any kind, is indifferent to any locality given it - as I said, it exists no more in our hand than in our brain because hand and brain are words expressing extrasubjective solids. However, the human spirit has no reason to unite the extrasubjective locality of the brain to the pain; the brain does not act as a foreign force (to which alone locality pertains) in producing the pain, but with a subjective, organic movement, in which locality is not present. On the other hand, the human spirit has a good, natural reason for associating the pain with the extrasubjective, foreign force which has its own locality to add to the pain. Strictly speaking therefore, it is not the pain which is added to the locality, but the locality which is added to the pain and as it were envelopes it.

2214. The more distinct the perception of the part of our body to which a sense-experience has been applied as cause, the more distinct the locality we attribute to the sense-experience. Vice versa, the sense-experience lacks locality in proportion to our lack of perception of the locality of its foreign or stimulating cause, that is, of the part of the body to which the cause is applied. This explains why we do not locate sensations of the eye distinctly in the retina. Our extrasubjective perception of the retina is not as distinct as that of our skin because we cannot touch the retina and fully distinguish its parts, just as we cannot touch light (the foreign stimulus in this case) and distinguish its parts. Hence, the sense-experience proper to the eye remains suspended, that is, not distinctly located in a part of our body until we use touch to give it a locality. This locality, however, is assigned by touch not to our body but to the spot where the sensiferous cause of the sensation of touch is present, that is, to the bodies we touch. Similarly, we do not locate images in the brain because we have no extrasubjective perception of the inside of the brain and its parts. We cannot perceive extrasubjectively the internal cause which moves the brain and produces an image; this cause is organic, not sensiferous. The images remain as if suspended in the air or, better, they exist for us as if they were external bodies. They are sense-experiences which we locate in the very place where we located them when, through external sensitivity, we first had the sense-experiences that correspond to them.

2215. I come now to the question of the extrasubjective cause of pain. Although organic, vital movement presents no shape in feeling, the sensiferous foreign force does, and gives rise to locality. Why is this so?
Many have tried to describe the extrasubjective phenomenon of sensory movement. I myself think the following is probable.

Sensory movement requires molecules organised in a particular way with a certain number and quality of elements. Whether these molecules constitute a fluid or a consistent continuum does not concern me.(152) Their elements are very mobile and so harmonious that when separated from a molecule they enter and become part of the next molecule. This molecule liberates more elements, which combine with the elements of the following molecule. The process of decomposition and recomposition continues along the whole nerve to the brain. Here the last liberated elements, having found no other molecules with which to unite, re-enter the molecule they left. Decomposition and recomposition now take place in the opposite direction, and the nerve is restored to its first state. Granted this chemico-organic-animal process, we would have the following results:

1. The phenomenon of the sense-experience would take place when decomposition had passed down the whole sensory organ.

2. The sense-experience would cease as soon as the recomposition of the molecules had ended.

3. Because the first molecules would be in a decomposed state longer than all the others, there would be some analogy between the extrasubjective phenomenon and the senseexperience, which would allow the sense-experience to be more easily attributed to a place. This would be further indicated by the decomposition and recomposition of all the intermediate molecules, carried out rapidly and with continuity of parts: these molecules, whose departing elements would be replaced by other elements, could always maintain their position, continuity and shape.

4. The extrasubjective phenomenon would thus be a disturbance of the entire sensory organ, a condition necessary for the individuation of feeling, without which we cannot be conscious of feeling.

5. Thus, when some stimulus causes the decomposition of the sensory molecules to begin at the exterior extremity, the external molecules are for a time decomposed; the result is a sense-experience. If however the decomposition begins from the nerve-centre, that is, from the brain, by the power of the animal instinct, it endures for a time in the particles of the internal extremity; the result is an image. Strictly speaking, this image is not located because the internal part of the brain is not subject to the extrasubjective experience we can have at the external surface of our body.

6. Violence is present at the place where the sensiferous stimulus is applied and the decomposition begins, because the first decomposition is due to the external force, not to the spontaneity of the instinct. On the other hand, successive recomposition and decomposition resulting from the spontaneity of the instinct would take place without any violence. Violence must be felt only at the beginning and not in the successive movements, although these are necessary for individualising the sense-experience of the violence.

2216. This hypothesis of the intestine displacement of the elements of sensory molecules without loss of their organisation would explain why strictly speaking the sense-experience exists where the stimulus has been applied. This 'where', however, does not become a place relative to the other parts of the body unless we perceive these parts in the same way and compare their whereabouts with the whereabouts of the other parts.

The state of displacement of the sensory molecules' elements therefore imparts to a sense-experience everything necessary for its referral to a locality in the extrasubjective, extended element because sensory molecules, nerves and the brain pertain to the domain of the extrasubjective. Thus when we say that the elements of the molecules remain displaced at the extremity of, say, a nerve, we are simply stating that they remain displaced and felt in that extrasubjective locality I call the nerve extremity.

2217. But what, in our case, is the meaning of 'sensory molecules'? Why must the molecules along the whole length of the nerve, together with the last molecules in the brain, receive the movement and change of elements I have described?
The answer, as I said, must lie in the individuality of the animal; an animal can feel only what enters its individuality. In the subjective order, this individuality requires a single feeling, that is, a single sentient principle and a single felt element. The felt element, considered as a felt-continuum, is single when not interrupted; considered as felt-excited, it needs a harmonious unity of movements which virtually contains all accidental sense-experiences in such a way that the feeling is always the same in its different modes.

In the domain of the extrasubjective, the organisation of the brain with its network of nerves corresponds to this subjective phenomenon of harmonious feeling and excitation. As I said, we cannot find the cause of this correspondence because everything we perceive extrasubjectively is purely phenomena beyond which we cannot go. The most we can do is verify and describe the fact of the organisation as corresponding to the individual sensitivity we can observe in a perfect animal, and certainly in human beings. This is the extensive and very delicate task of physiologists.

The brute animal is an individual, even though awareness of our human individuality is grounded in the intellective principle. Individuation exists in the brute when sense-experiences have the same sentient principle. In other words, individuation is produced by the same activity operating in every senseexperience;(153) everything unaffected by this activity lies outside the individual. But, as I said elsewhere, in the domain of the extrasubjective, a harmony or kind of centre of movements corresponds to this active, sentient principle.

2218. Summing up therefore:

1. Neither the fundamental feeling nor sense-experiences have locality.

2. Among perceptions of a foreign force (external bodies), there is a class of surface perceptions, that is, perceptions of a surface space.

3. Relative to the sentient principle, these surface spaces have no locality. We cannot say that they are inside or outside, distant from or near to the principle, because the sentient principle has no real place. Consequently, no relationship of place can be thought in its regard.

4. These spaces however, because united and continuous, acquire a respective locality, that is, one of them or a part of them is on this or that side, etc., of another, in continuity with it or a part of it.

5. When we ourselves add active movement, these surfaces, although turning in all directions, give us the feeling of a determined, solid space. The continuity of the surfaces on every side together with the movement causes us to perceive in a measured form our own body, exterior bodies and space. Hence,

a) the parts of our body acquire a position, a locality relative to our body when the latter has become a solid extension,
b) simultaneously this solid extension acquires a locality relative to all surrounding bodies, and
c) relative to every imagined point in space.

6. In this way, solidity, places and external spaces are created in human feeling. Hence, every subjective sense-experience is located in one of the places determined in extrasubjective extension. This is the result of our extrasubjective perception of the violent, external cause of the sense-experience. When this cause, which is both sensiferous and a foreign body, is located in a point of our extrasubjective body, it violently produces a sense-experience which we locate precisely where we have perceived the cause. However, if this does not occur and the cause of the sense-experience is not extrasubjectively perceived, or if we do not perceive the place where the cause is applied (and this cannot be supplied by our imagination), we can no longer locate the sense-experience at the place of the cause. This happens in the case of visual sense-experiences, or of internal sense-experiences, images. To perceive the cause of a senseexperience, that is, of the external body which stimulates feeling, is to perceive the locality where the cause is applied.

7. A general law for determining this locality is the determination given by the two nerve extremities, one external, the other internal in the brain. The probable explanation is that in the sensory movement the extremities experience violence in such a way that the physiological composition of their molecules is altered. In the subsequent spontaneous, but not violent, transmutation of the elements, the intermediate molecules preserve their elementary composition intact.(154) The centrality of the brain, by contributing essentially to the harmonious unity of the fundamental feeling of excitation, corresponds to the state of individuation of the feeling. In fact, the active sentient principle must be the same in all sense-experiences. It seems therefore that the cerebral motions must correspond, in the extrasubjective order, to the sentient principle of whose activity the senseexperiences are modes; in other words, when the sensory motions take place, the sentient principle intervenes to make its activity felt. The motions however, as motions, do not fall under subjective sensation, which has neither place nor space of its own. And even if they could be observed, observation would give something purely extrasubjective.

2219. Up to now, our explanation of locality has been drawn from the nature of the animal, and is valid for localities revealed in both healthy and sick human bodies.
I must now speak more particularly about pathological locality. It will be sufficient to mention a few accidents which in different ways determine the activity of the sentient principle and cause it to appear more in one part than in another of the extrasubjective body.
Let us consider the body as we have formed it for ourselves by use of our exterior senses, that is, the body we have as adults. We have blind faith in this concept; all the reasoning of the commonalty about the body is based on it.

1. The first phenomenon presented by, for example, a cut on our arm, is pain. The pain is not felt simply at the external extremity, where the violent cause was applied, but is propagated along the whole nerve. The displacement of the elements composing the sensory molecules of the nerve must in this case be violent not only at the place where the stimulus was applied and to which the spontaneous sensory movement is united, but the violence itself must be propagated, and the decomposition and recomposition lack regularity.

2220. 2. Another morbid phenomenon is the duration of pain in the same spot. - Here, the decomposition of the molecules must be continuously repeated in a movement that is disordered, oscillating and of changing frequency. When the pain is intense, painful throbbing is felt, like the throbbing of the pulse. This throbbing is possibly the violent oscillations, which take place in feeling itself, of the elementary particles. The frequent throbbing of the blood must certainly play a role in preserving this oscillation. Acute headaches are a clear example, with their frequent throbbing which almost splits the head open.

2221. 3. Pain is transferred from one place to another not only successively, as in the case of inflammation, but by leaps. - Whenever pain is manifested in a place through a wound or inflammation or in any other way, the whole activity of the sentient principle, which struggles in the way I have described, concurs in producing the pain. But this universal activity of the sentient principle, aroused to do battle and producing the first located pain, acts differently in and alters the whole body. This action in the whole body together with the resultant alterations is determined in mode and effects by the organisation, which corresponds to the harmonious unity of feeling: first, by the organisation of the nerves, then by the organisation of the vessels and the quality and quantity of their fluids, and finally by the laws of sympathy. For example, great pain will accelerate the flow of blood and produce fever, or inflame and change the composition of the blood.

If a pain resulting from a previous pain in another place is to be revealed in a particular place of the body, it is sufficient for the nerves at that place to be violently excited by the universal action of the sentient principle in such a way that elements which have the tendency to escape from their sphere are displaced. The itching felt in the nose when a person suffers from worms is simply a kind of movement in the nerve system propagated from the intestines to the brain, and from the brain to the nose, but in such a way that the sensory displacement of the elements takes place in the final extremity. Granted this displacement, sensation is verified according to the hypothesis I have proposed.

2222. 4. A pain in one place is present in many other places. The explanation is similar to that of the previous phenomenon.

5. A universal affection produces a local pain. - Here again, the explanation is the same.

6. A sense-experience of pain due to a disorder in another part where there is no awareness of pain. - Baglivi speaks about the illness of a woman who suffered acute pains in a kidney. When her corpse was dissected, the kidney where the pain had been felt was found to be healthy, while the other kidney contained a stone. The animal principle was active in both kidneys, according to the law that there is one passion and action in symmetrical, double parts. Nevertheless, the kidney which contained the stone did not present any sense-experience because the morbid condition, the stone, checked the oscillation and prevented the elements from being displaced, while oscillation took place in the healthy kidney.

7. Sensitivity, taste, touch, etc. alter. - In my hypothesis, this alteration presupposes a different composition of the sensory molecules. If the sense-experience is altered in quality - for example, the taste of a substance seems to change to another taste - the elements have probably acquired an aptitude for displacing themselves in the sensory molecule in an unusual way. If the alteration is purely in the degree of sensitivity, without a quality variation in the sense-experience, the phenomenon could result from the mobility of the elements and from insufficient protection in the nerves against the stimulus. Women have been observed who could not touch velvet without fainting; the sensation in the skin of the hand excited the sentient principle which acted throughout the whole nerve and vessel systems.(155)

2223. 8. The ganglionic system, when it has become suitable for proffering observable sense-experiences. - What has been said in the previous paragraph applies to this phenomenon. Alteration in the composition of the elements, greater mobility, and greater communication with the cerebral and vessel systems, all render the ganglionic system more suitable for undergoing sensory displacement of the elements or acquiring the opportune stimulus previously absent.

2224. So far, we have dealt with the locality of senseexperiences; we must now discuss the locality of movements and the morbid phenomena which follow them.
The locality of movements and morbid phenomena is explained in the same way as the locality of sense-experiences which movements precede and follow. Like these senseexperiences, movements are tied to locality. All morbid phenomena, in their turn, are accompanied or constituted by movements.

2225. Every kind of fever could, I think, be attributed to one of these two causes, that is, to an affection either of the nervous system or of the vessel system(156) - one is always disturbing the other to some degree.

2226. Locality is first determined by a violent, primitive stimulus, and then by sympathy, which is modified in different ways by accidental variations in organic texture and internal organism.
Sometimes a organ which suffers through sympathy is gravely diseased while the first, irritated organ suffers lightly. For example, cold acting externally on the body's surfaces causes inflammation of the chest, intestines, bladder, etc.

2227. I should say something about therapeutic locality, that is, about the application and action of therapeutic substances to determined parts of the body and of their effects in certain other parts or relative to the general condition. The same principles however also explain this kind of locality.
Note, medicines are rarely applied to a diseased part but mostly to the gastric, mucous membranes.
The locality to which medicines transmit the effect of their action are mostly determined 1. by sympathy, 2 by the abovementioned causes which impart some particular, local direction to the sympathy, and 3. principally by the nerve and vessel systems and the laws governing these systems.(157)

Notes

(148) Cf. NE, vol. 2, 983-1019, where I have spoken about the natural disharmonies between the two modes of perceiving our body.

(149) The parts of the body in question here are always external, surface parts. This does not mean we form no image at all of what we call the supposedly internal parts. We certainly form an image of them by dissecting bodies. But we must note carefully that bodies have to be cut open if so-called internal parts are to come under our senses. In other words, the parts we imagine as real are always external, surface parts which we make such through dissection prior to perceiving them. Subsequently, our imagination pictures them as internal, but can do this only by treating them as surfaces, that is, as it saw and touched them, etc, when they were uncovered and their surfaces became visible.

(150) Cf. AMS, 162-174.

(151) NE, vol. 2, 838-841.

(152) Alexander von Humboldt (Observations sur l'anguille lectrique. Recueil d'observations de zoologie et d'anat. compare par A. de Humboldt et Bonpland, 1811, pp. 82-87) claimed to have proved by experiment that there is a sensible atmosphere surrounding the nerves and muscles. However, if this atmosphere exists, no one apparently has shown that it is sensory, but simply suitable for stimulating the sensory organ it surrounds.

(153) There is no sense-experience without an act of the soul. I called this activity 'life instinct'. In the extrasubjective order, it is clearly seen in the movements of a continuity formed from parts, although in the subjective order of excitation there is a corresponding sense-experience and a function carried out only in an extremity of the moved parts. Dr. Gall seems to have proved that the cerebellum is the organ of physical love (Exposition de la doctrine de Gall etc. par I. B. Nacquart, c. 10). This simply means that a series of movements corresponds to that class of sense-experiences which move from the generative parts to the cerebellum and vice versa. I would add that this confirms what I have said elsewhere about the role of the sensitive soul in the generative process (Rights in the Family, 1056-1060).

(154) This hypothesis allows us to suspect what I think is very probable, that there is an oscillation or frequency in sensory movement. We can readily suppose a frequent displacement and replacement of the component elements of the molecules of the two nerve extremities.

(155) The smallest movements of the capillary nerves can in themselves be natural and unassociated with any morbid, painful phenomenon. But the frequency and multitude of these movements, when carried to and accumulated in the brain, can cause disturbance. This demonstrates once again how a simple physiological action can cause the most harmful, morbid or fatal consequences. Tickling hypochondriacs and the soles of the feet can affect the brain to such a degree that it causes delirium and death.

(156) Inflammation is the direct action of the vessel system. Simple irritations, the state of muscular strength or weakness, the lesion of sensitivity and all the symptoms of so-called nerve fevers, contagious illnesses, etc., pertain directly to an affection of the nervous system.

(157) We must carefully distinguish nutrient substances from therapeutic substances: the administration of the former pertains to hygiene, the latter to therapy, both of which are necessary to medical practice. What is the truly therapeutic effect of certain substances which have nutrition as their effect? Apart from mechanical and chemical effects, the strictly physiological effect of therapeutic substances is, it seems, purely stimulant: a stimulus is used to correct and balance other stimuli; one irritation to counter other irritations, etc. This is obtained through the zoic course described earlier.