Smell, Taste, and Allied Senses in the Vertebrates (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Smell, Taste, and Allied Senses in the Vertebrates Sense organs have always excited general interest, for they are the means of approach to the human mind. Without them our intellectual life would be a blank. The deaf and the blind show how serious is the loss of even a single set of these organs. Although the ear and the eye have commonly received most attention, the other sense organs, such as those of smell and of taste, are in reality equally worthy of consideration. These organs are of first significance in warning us of untoward conditions that may exist about us particularly in relation to our food. But they not only serve us in this protective way, they are also of the utmost importance in initiating that chain of events which culminates in successful nutrition. Through their action the secretion of the digestive juices and other like operations, so essential to the proper treatment of the food, are started and furthered in the alimentary canal. Thus their activities, though less associated with our mental states than are those of the ear and of the eye, are nevertheless so essential to our organic well-being that they are in reality quite as necessary to us as the so-called higher senses. Smell and taste, together with certain other senses not so well known, form a more or less natural group in which there is a certain amount of functional interrelation and genetic connection, and it is from this standpoint that these senses will be considered in the following pages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.