"Where hallucinations of taste have been noted they are mostly nauseous or poisonous (arsenic, copper, filth), and frequently give rise to refusal of nourishment, or it may be to continued spitting. In the early stages of paralysis, on the other hand, gustatory hallucinations of an agreeable nature are sometimes reported, the patient perhaps describing the enjoyment of all the various dishes of an imaginary menu. Olfactory hallucinations are, on the whole, infrequent, and are seldom of an agreeable character. The experiences of the patient who declared he smelt all the perfumes of Arabia and the East are exceptional, for hallucinations of this sense are, generally speaking, associated with delusions about bodily foulness, and odors of corruption and corpses, due to visceral disturbances. Lélut reports the case of an insane woman who declared that the pestilential odors she perceived arose from corpses buried in certain vaults under the Salpêtrière. Sometimes, haunted by the fear of being murdered, the sufferer perceives everywhere the fumes of charcoal, noxious gases, and particles of poisonous dust. Olfactory hallucinations seldom appear alone, but are generally associated with other sensory fallacies. Some authors consider that they belong more to the early stages of insanity. They are frequently found in association with local disease of the ovaries, and of the reproductive organs in general.
A kind of auditory hallucination worthy of special note is “audible thinking,” wherein the patient hears his own thoughts spoken aloud, and imagines that they can be heard by everybody, or else hears them repeated or dictated to him by an imaginary being. Fallacious perceptions of the other senses are also not uncommon. Many sufferers see the persecutors who torment them from a distance by means of magnetic and electrical apparatus. They entertain kings and princesses, and receive angels’ visits; all these hallucinations occur in a state of full consciousness.
For example, the commonest visual hallucinations (in which black and red play a leading part) are black rats, cats, snakes, and spiders, shining stars, fiery spheres, and so on. But these do not remain motionless. Either they go diagonally across the patient’s field of vision, in which case they proceed from the hemianaesthetic side; or else (generally) they come from behind the patient, hasten past, and disappear in the distance. In this case also the apparitions occur on the hemianaesthetic side . . . These premonitory hallucinations haunt the sufferer even by day, but in the night they become much more persistent and vivid, and what was only a passing vision before, develops into a long scene, in which the patient is called upon to take a part.
Among the tribes of the western plains of the United States a cactus known as peyote is widely used in their religious rites. The plants themselves, when made into decoctions or when eaten as dried fruit, produce a variety of effects, among which are those of color vision. Dr. Theodate Smith, an expert in experimental psychology, has furnished me with the following memoranda of an experiment on herself in the use of the peyote. Earlier trials produced in part very disagreeable effects and in part excessive motor excitement, but after repeated trials color visions came only when she placed herself under some restraint from motor activity; then there appeared a set of retinal effects in a succession of dissolving views which she described to an attendant who was charged with making a record of her words.
The following is an extract from this record:
Branches of coral, in color a deep, beautiful blue.
Flattened forms of coral shape, deep purple changing to red with ruby red tips.
An electric fountain, many colors.
Colors of a peacock’s tail, form somewhat indistinct.
Flashes of light over the whole retinal field; predominant color a wonderful intense green.
Flower forms quantities of violets, yellow in color, flickering light over them, also yellow.
Deep opal-blue rings running outward from a center and in constant motion.
Beautiful green light, like light in an electric fountain; no special form.
A complex Grecian pattern, deep blue with white dots suggesting snowflakes over it.
This changes through many tints of blue to turquoise blue; the form becomes a bowl and pitcher ornamented with gold.
A ship with square sails on the bluest ocean, intensely blue.
Blue aureoles encircling everything as I half open my eyes in dim light.
Strings of beads of many colors.
Embroidered leather with rainbow colors flickering over it as if from a stained-glass window.
Nine leaves of silvery gray conventionalized.
Cat’s fur, but colored blue and white.
The blue becomes lines and forms, the outline of a big centipede.
Venetian glass, amethyst tinted, shades from light to dark, wavy lines running through it, forms not distinct.
An escutcheon, quarterings of blue, steely blue, a shield with lines; around the shield four swallow tails. These enlarge, cover and finally blot out the shield.
A shining laurel leaf.
A beautiful chandelier, richly jeweled and blazing with light.
A stained-glass window, red, blue, and amber, colors rich and deep, forms not well defined.
A crazy quilt, pretty but very crazy. A transparent flexible lily shape, with wavy lines running through it like bird-of-paradise feathers; no color in the form itself, but it seems to float in the midst of colored light.
Phosphorescent fishes’ eyes.
Fish scales of wonderful green, changing to shell shapes in the green light.
A picture of an arctic sunset, with silver rays rising from it, and far off on the edge an aureole of beautiful blue.
A ceiling from which hang ribbon cards of every color.
A camel with gorgeous trappings, with a palm tree behind him.
Embroidery of red chrysanthemums, variously mixed with pale pinks and yellows.
All of the North American tribes have intoxicants that produce hallucinations, but they supplement these intoxicants with many rites such as dancing, singing, ululation, the beating of drums, and the tormenting of the body by various painful operations, all designed to produce ecstatic states and the consequent hallucinations.
Among all tribal men many hallucinations are supposed to be veridical, as some are supposed to be by certain members of the Society for Psychical Research. So tribesmen resort to the agencies which produce both hallucinations and illusions to obtain a view of the world about them, of the past and of the future, in order that their conduct may be governed by this superior knowledge."
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