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A Sixth Sense

1884; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 29; Issue: 752 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/029502b0

1476-4687

Henry Faulds,

History of Science and Medicine

IN the valuable address given by Sir William Thomson at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, on October 3, and reported so fully in the columns of NATURE, it is implied that Dr. Thomas Reid of Glasgow brought out the distinction of a sixth or muscular sense. I cannot find any satisfactory evidence of this, although Reid came very near it indeed when he stated in his “Inquiry into the Human Mind,” chap. v. section 1:—“By touch we perceive not one quality only, but many, and those of very different kinds;” and again:—“There is, no doubt, a sensation by which we perceive a body to be hard or soft;” and again, further on he even speaks of its being strange that this sense should “be so much unknown as never to have been made an object of thought or reflection nor to have been honoured with a name in any language.”