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Show 150 EXPRESSIO~ OF SUFFERING: :1. . CHAP. VI. wings of his nose (which are partly acted on by one of the same muscles) are almost always a ~ittle drawn ~P· If he keeps his mouth firmly shut wh1lst contracting the muscles round the eyes, and then suddenly relaxes his lips, he will feel that the pressure on his eyes i~mediately increases. So again when~ person ?n a bngh~, glaring day wishes to look at .a d1st~nt obJect, but ~s compelled partially to close his eyelids, the uppe~ hp may almost always be observed to be somewhat raised. The mouths of some very short-sighted persons, who are forced habitually to reduce the aperture of their eyes, wear from this same reason a grinning expression. The raising of the upper lip draws upwards the flesh of the upper parts of the cheeks, and produces a strongly marked fold on each cheek,-the naso-labial fold,-which runs from near the wings of the nostrils to the corners of the mouth a.nd below them. This fold or furrow may be seen in all the photographs, and is very characteristic of the expression of a crying child ; though a nearly similar fold is produced in the act of laughing or smiling.4 4 Although Dr. Duchenne bus so carefully studied the contraction of the different muscles during the act of crying, and the furrows on the face thus produced, there seems to be iomething incomplete in his account; but what this is I cannot say. He has given a figure (Album, fig. 48) in which one half of the face is made, by galvanizing the proper muscles, to smile; whilst the other half is similarly made to begin crying. Almost all those (viz. nineteen out of twenty-one persons) to whom I showed the smiling half of the face instantly recog· nized the expression; but, with respect to the other half, only six persons out of twenty-one recognized it,-that is, if we accept such terms as " grief," "misery," "annoyance,'' as correct ;-whereas, fifteen persons were ludicrously mistaken; some of them saying the face expressed "fun," " satisfaction," ''cunning," " disgust,'' &c. We may infer from this that there is something wrong in the expression. Some of the fifteen persons may, however, have been partly misled by not expecting to see an old man crying, and by tears not being secreted. With respect to another figure by Dr. Duchenne (fig. 49)~ in which tho r. CHAP. VI. WEEPING. 151 As the upper lip is much drawn up during the act of screaming, in the manner just explained, the depressor muscles of the angles of the mouth (seeK in woodcuts 1 and 2) are strongly contracted in order to keep the mouth widely open, so that a full volume of sound. may be poured forth. The action of these opposed muscles, above and below, tends to give to the mouth an oblong, almost squarish outline, as may be seen in the accompanying photographs. An excellent ob· server,5 in describing a baby crying whilst being fed, says, " it made its mouth like a square, and let the por· " ridge run out at all four corners." I believe, but we shall return to this point in a future chapter, that the depressor muscles of the angles of the mouth are less under the separate control of the will than the adjoining ~us.cles; so that i~ a young child is only doubtfully Inchned to cry, this muscle is generally the first to contract, and is the last to cease contracting. When older children commence crying, the muscles which run to the upper lip are often the first to contract; and this may perhaps be due to older children not having so strong a tendency to scream loudly, and consequently to keep their mouths widely open; so that the above-named depressor muscles are not brought into such strong action. With one of my own infants, from his eighth day and mu~cle~ of half th~ face are galvanized in order to represent a man be~mm.ng to cry, w.1t~ tho eyebrow on the same side rendered oblique, wh1ch 1s char~cter1sbc of misery, the expression was recognized by a ~roater proportiOnal number of persons. Out of twenty-three persons, fourteen answered correctly, " sorrow '' " distress " '' rrricf" "J·ust going t ,, " d , ' b ' o cry, en urance of pain," &c. On the other hand, nine per~ons either could form no opinion or were entirely wrong answerinO' '' cunninc,.. t 01 b leer," ''jocund," ''looking at an intense light," "looking at a distant object," &c. 6 Mrs. Gaskell, ' Mary Bm·ton,' new cclH. p. 81. |