SEEING DEVILS AND SNAKES.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 17, Issue 6, 23 January 1903, Page 2

SEEING DEVILS AND SNAKES.

Our senses are made unreliable by both natural and unnatural variations. Treating of farics, apparitions and hallucinations, Sir Lauder Brunton lately pointed out the great differences in the acuteness of the senses, some persons seeing blue flames in the fire in winter, and some hearing the shrieks of bats and myriads of other sounds on summer evenings, while others perceive nothing. Similarly there aro people who feel what others do not feel. Apparitions aro probably due to unnatural conditions of the apparatus for receiving impressions. The internal vessels of the brain may contract, like those outside and .thus give anaemia of parts of the brain and subsequent affections of vision, hearing, smell and taste. Psychologists connect epilepsy with the form of headache known as migraine. Migraine is often preceded by a vision of zigzags or snakes, and a troop of visions in this form with which Dore illustrated the " Inferno ” suggests that both ho and Dante suffered this form of headache. Stories of fairies may bo referred in part to visions. Hallucinations of sight glide naturally into hallucinations of hearing, and both into epileptic visions. To such visions the " Koran ” of Mohammed seems to have been due, and it is curious to speculate upon the changes in history a thorough dosing of the prophet with bromide of potassium might have wrought.