COLOURS OF PAIN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."'
Sin,—The recent letters on this subject are so interesting that I cannot help adding my own experience on the subject. To me, as to another of your correspondents, inflammatory pain always appears as a vivid crimson. Others less acute are a dull green or brown. When I feel well and in good spirits I also always see a lovely clear blue green before my eyes, should I close them after a few moments. One keeps these little mental experiences, as a rule, strictly to oneself, for fear of ridicule, but I doubt not they are far more general than is supposed for this very reason. I once had a far more curious experience. I was ill at the time, and I suppose my nerves were in an abnormal state, as I had just suffered a great shock by the sudden death of a dear sister. In any case, and whatever the reason, I saw a colour that does not exist to ordinary eyesight. It was as perfectly distinct from other colours as blue is from red or yellow. It was most beautiful, and I should recognize it again anywhere. It was not a mere shade, for I saw it in all its gradations from the palest to the deepest tint. I was not asleep at the time nor dreaming, although, as in these colours of pain, I saw it, of course, with my mind's eye. The nearest approach to it that I have ever seen was, oddly enough, a few years later, when I was taken by a friend to hear a lecture on the Röntgen rays. I had had nothing to recall it to my mind. The lecturer showed us various experi- ments as to the different effects produced by electric rays pass- ing through divers substances. There were in particular the most wonderful lilacs and greens, and I almost cried out aloud, for the latter appeared to me the commencement, as it were, of the new colours I had seen with my mind's eye some years before. I wonder if any of your readers may have had a similar experience. Of course it is, I believe, well known that insects see other colours we cannot, and that such actually do exist. I may add that my daughters, as little children, used always to speak of some smells as "a grey smell." This applied particularly to blankets or carpets, and, I think, is very expressive. They also, to this day, associate all names with colours, and the youngest one also sees figures in colours, and when doing arithmetic had a great, and per- haps even unfair, advantage over other children from this fact. It served, indeed, as a natural "abacus," and was an enormous help to her, as she saw the numbers so plainly in colours—any mistake was impossible.—I am, Sir, Sta., sltebeg, Sirkhill, Inverness-shim
A. Z. FEMME.
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