"True! -- nervous -- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses -- not destroyed -- not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.... Hearken! and observe how healthily -- how calmly I can tell you the whole story."

adrenal cortical insufficiency

• "The senses are rendered morbidly acute [in rabies], the surface of the body irritatable and readily acted upon by the slightest gust of air, even the feeling of the pulse, inducing an accession of the convulsive paroxysm." [102]
• Contains sections the menstrual cycle and other endocrine influences on olfactory sensitivity. Notes that epileptic individuals are reported to exhibit greater olfactory sensitivity than nonepileptic individuals. [103]
• Color vision varies synchronously with circadian cortisol levels. [104]
• The book review in JAMA 1993;270:2983-2984 is generally unfavorable, but contains some pearls from the book and the reviewer:
  • "Le Guérer presents uncritically... the erroneous statement that schizophrenic children often possess extraordinary olfactory acuity."
  • Pigs can be trained to dig more than a meter into the ground for truffles because that fungus contains a swine sex phermone.
  • "Dogs may be successfully domesticated in part because of their `propensity for the odors of human waste.'"
  • "The fact that the elimination of perceived aromatic differences opened the way to integration of the social classes suggests that plumbing is more essential to democracy than parliamentary procedure."
  • In the middle ages, "nonhousebroken goats were kept inside one's abode -- a preventive measure that may have had some efficacy since the odor of goat `repelled the fleas and lice that spread bubonic plague.'"
  [105]
• di-007,di-008,ne-501,ge-006,no-w002,no-w007 [106]
• This is actually part of a biannual series. The Lancet had a series on literature and medicine during 1996-1997. As Abraham Lincoln once said: "People who like this sort of thing will find this is the sort of thing they like." [107]
• A more recent discussion of the acoustic frequencies of heart murmurs. [108]