As soon as she burst into tears, the features all changed and
this peculiar expression vanished. Again, after a little boy
had been vaccinated, which made him scream and cry violently,
the surgeon gave him an orange brought for the purpose,
and this pleased the child much; as he stopped crying all the
characteristic movements were observed, including the formation
of rectangular wrinkles in the middle of the forehead.
Lastly, I met on the road a little girl three or four years old,
who had been frightened by a dog, and when I asked her what was
the matter, she stopped whimpering, and her eyebrows instantly
became oblique to an extraordinary degree.
[5] Mecanisme de la Phys. Humaine, Album, p. 15.
Here then, as I cannot doubt, we have the key to the problem why the central
fasciae of the frontal muscle and the muscles round the eyes contract
in opposition to each other under the influence of grief;--whether their
contraction be prolonged, as with the melancholic insane, or momentary,
from some trifling cause of distress. We have all of us, as infants,
repeatedly contracted our orbicular, corrugator, and pyramidal muscles,
in order to protect our eyes whilst screaming; our progenitors before us
have done the same during many generations; and though with advancing years
we easily prevent, when feeling distressed, the utterance of screams,
we cannot from long habit always prevent a slight contraction of the
above-named muscles; nor indeed do we observe their contraction in ourselves,
or attempt to stop it, if slight.
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