Note 64 — Chapter VI

It is stated by Baillarger (Mémoires de l'Académie Royale de Médicine, tom. xii. p. 273, etc.) that while visual hallucinations are more frequent than auditory in healthy life, the reverse relation holds in disease. At the same time, Griesinger remarks (loc. cit., p. 98) that visual hallucinations are rather more common than auditory in disease also. This is what we should expect from the number of subjective sensations connected with the peripheral organ of vision. The greater relative frequency of auditory hallucinations in disease, if made out, would seem to depend on the close connection between articulate sounds and the higher centres of intelligence, which centres are naturally the first to be thrown out of working order. It is possible, moreover, that auditory hallucinations are quite as common as visual in states of comparative health, though more easily overlooked. Professor Huxley relates that he is liable to auditory though not to visual hallucinations. (See Elementary Lessons in Physiology, p. 267.)