Page:Eleanor Gamble - The Applicability of Weber's Law to Smell.pdf/45

Rh a stimulus alters with the duration of an inspiration as well as with the manipulation of the instrument, the subject must make more than one inspiration to determine a limen, unless the judgment is very easy, It is probable that the first part of the inspiration, before the smell “blossoms out,” gives the best criterion of the intensity of a stimulus. We would suggest that cumulative stimulation of smell would be a profitable subject of investigation.

In an effort to smell with the standard olfactometer, C., D., K., P., Rob., Rog., Sh. and T. all tipped the bead to the left if using the left nostril, and to the right if using the right, pointed the outward end of the inhaling-tube in the same direction as the head was tipped, and slanted the screen in the opposite direction. This odd uniformity is perhaps explicable, On entering the nose the air ordinarily streams a little toward the septum and the opposite directions in which the subject slanted his head and the screen tended on each side to throw the opening of the nose-piece into an acute angle with the septum, while the turn given to the instrument in the horizontal plane threw the opening a Little toward the front of the nose. On the other hand, Se. exactly reversed these directions on each side, and so did Be., except that be turned the tube to point in the same direction as the screen was slanted, so throwing its inner opening towards the back of the nose. Bi. slanted both head and screen to the right when using the right nostril, and to the left when using the left. This was probably a mere matter of attention to one nostril or the other. She was not consistent in the pointing of the tube. N. turned everything to the right. Unfortunately, no written notes were taken of the hand used, but it was usually the right, the hand farther from the experimenter. All the subjects tended to tilt the hand forward and the screen backward,—probably in their desire to get “nearer” the stimulus. Almost all, unbidden, closed their eyes.

T. once mentioned verbal associations as an aid in memorizing the stimulus. This expedient was not common. Be. wrinkled his forehead and nose in a marked degree, and once noted a tendency to judge in terms of strain, especially about the eyes. Some substances were pungent to a disturbing extent to every one, but C. and D. complained much of “pain” from odors which no one else thought pungent. D. explicitly distinguished the sensation from pressure. He thought coumarine both pungent and “sour.” Both C. and D. said that they received simply sensations of pressure from some stimuli. With D. sensations of smell merged in sensations of pressure as the organ became exhausted. C. said that when she tried to smell the black rubber with the left nostril she merely felt as if she were “breathing a feather,” or as if the inside of her nose were “pressed with a soft wad.” Yet the judgments made with this nostril agreed pretty well with those made with the other. Be. occasionally spoke of sensations of pressure or pain from the stimuli. Most of the subjects expressly denied temperature-associations. Be., however, said that tolu and heliotropine were cold; M. that cocoa-butter was cold ; Rob. that vanilline was cold ; and V. that white tallow and musk-root were warm, and camphor cold, and that every smell grew warmer as it grew stronger. He thought of heliotrope as “warm, dark and deep,” in contrast with ylang ylang, which was “light and fluffy.”

The comparative sensitivity of the subjects may be judged from the following Table: