Translations:Victor of Aveyron/58/en

Such were, among a multitude of others, the stimulants, as well physical as moral, with which I labored to develop the sensibility of his organs. These means produced, after the short space of three months, a general excitement of all his sensitive powers. Bv that time the touch showed itself sensible to the impression of all bodies, whether warm or cold, smooth or rough, soft or hard. At that period I wore a pair of velvet pantaloons, over which he seemed to take pleasure in drawing his hand. It was by his touch that he generally ascertained whether his potatoes were sufficiently boiled: he took them from the bottom of the pot with a spoon; he then laid hold of them, repeatedly, with his fingers, and afterward decided, from the degree of hardness or softness, whether to eat them or to throw them back into the boiling water. When a piece of paper was given to him to light a candle, he seldom waited till the wick caught fire, but hastily threw away the paper before the flame was near touching his fingers. After having been induced to push or to carry a body that was either hard or heavy, he seldom failed to draw away his hands of a sudden, to look attentively at the end of his fingers, although they were not in the slightest degree bruised or wounded, and to put them in a leisurely manner in the opening of his waistcoat. The sense of smell had been, in a similar manner, improved in consequence of the change which had taken place in his constitution. The least irritation applied to this organ excited sneezing; and, I presumed, from the horror with which he was seized the first time that this happened, that it was a thing altogether new to him. He was so much agitated as even to throw himself on his bed.