Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/646

630 this is very markedly so in the case of those cranial nerves which supply the face with common sensation. Probably he will have observed that in the neighborhood of the heart, stomach, and liver, as well as in certain other parts, there are extraordinary aggregations of sympathetic fibers. Each of these dense networks of nerves and ganglia is called a plexus, arid primarily, no doubt, each plexus is busily engaged in superintending the purely organic duties of the viscera in its neighborhood. But this is not its only function. It is a very curious fact that when we try to localize any deeply felt emotion, it seems to appeal to the consciousness from one or other of these very regions. The least analytical mind is aware that we do not love, or hate, or fear, with our heads, but that, in each case, the feeling takes its rise somewhere in the body cavity. Hence the conventional phrases, "warm-hearted" "bowels of compassion," and many others of like nature, which are only approximately correct from an anatomical point of view, since it is demonstrable that the organs named are only affected secondarily, and do not indicate the exact spot where the emotion is felt.

It is not possible to discuss this subject fully on the present occasion; but enough has been said to show that, in their inception as well as in their expression, the feelings which accompany the passions are referable to parts of the sympathetic nervous system.

Now the question might very naturally be asked, What has all this to do with physiognomy? I hope to show, if my readers will follow me in an argument involving a few more technical details, that in these complex functions of the sympathetic nervous system we may find an explanation of certain curious points of facial resemblance among people whose pursuits and mental habits, at first sight, put them as far as the poles asunder.

We will take, as examples, the common facial traits seen in professional musicians, religious devotees, of the priestly class, and sensual "men about town."

To show how the fibers from the sympathetic ganglia affect growth and nutrition in certain localities, let me instance the different results which follow the division of the fifth cranial nerve in two different parts of its course from the brain to the face. If it is cut after it has received its accessory fibers from the sympathetic system, a destructive inflammation at once arises in the eye, owing to defective or perverted nutrition; but if the division takes place on the cranial side of the ganglion through which the nerve passes, so as to leave the sympathetic fibers intact, no such consequences follow, although the part supplied by the nerves is entirely cut off from the brain.

Redness or pallor of the skin is the direct result of the