Section 102. (5) Illusions of the Sense of Taste.
Illusions of taste are of importance for us only in cases of poisoning
in which we want the assistance of the victim, or desire to taste the
poison in question in order to determine its nature. That taste
and odor are particularly difficult to get any unanimity about is
an old story, and it follows that it is still more difficult clearly to
understand possible illusions of these senses. That disease can cause
mistaken gustatory impressions is well known. But precedent
poisoning may also create illusions. Thus, observation shows that
poisoning by rose-santonin (that well-known worm remedy to which
children are so abnormally sensitive) causes a long-enduring, bitter
taste; sub-cutaneous morphine poisoning causes illusory bitter
and sour tastes. Intermittent fevers tend to cause, when there is
no attack and the patient feels comparatively well, a large number of
metallic, particularly coppery tastes. If this is true it may lead to
unjustified suspicions of poisoning, inasmuch as the phenomena
of intermittent fever are so various that they can not all be identified.
Imagination makes considerable difference here. Taine tells
somewhere of a novelist, who so graphically described the poisoning
of his heroine that he felt the taste of arsenic and got indigestion.
This may be possible, for perhaps everybody has already learned
the great influence of the false idea of the nature of a food. If some
salt meat is taken to be a sweet pastry, the taste becomes disgusting
because the imaginary and the actual tastes seem to be mixed. The
eye has especial influence, and the story cited and denied a hundred
times, that in the dark, red wine and white wine, chicken and goose,
can not be distinguished, that the going out of a cigar is not noted,
etc., is true. With your eyes closed it may be possible to eat an
onion instead of an apple.
Prior tastes may cause significant gustatory illusions. Hence,
when assertions are made about tastes, it is always necessary to
inquire at the outset what had been eaten or drunk before. Experienced
housewives take this fact into consideration in setting their
tables and arranging their wines. The values of the wines are considerably
raised by complete illusions of taste. All in all, it must not
be forgotten that the reliability of the sense of taste can not be estimated
too low. The illusions are greatest especially when a thing
has been tasted with a preconceived notion of its taste.
