Sense organs- Ear- taste buds - skin touch

THE OTHER SENSES 

Man has about 3,000 taste buds. They are mainly on the tongue, although there are a few on the palate, tonsils, and pharynx. There are four primary or basic tastes sensations-sweet, bitter, sour or acid, and salt. You can't taste all flavors on all parts of the tongue. Sweet flavors register near the tip, sour on the sides, bitter on the back, and salty all over. The sense of smell is located in odor receptors in the upper passage of the nasal cavity. 

The size of the membrane containing the odor receptors is only about one-fourth square inch in man as against an area 40 times as great in the dog. The organ of smell, which can detect things at a distance, is obviously more important as a danger warning system in animals than in man. It's because of the location of the receptors that you may not smell delicate odors at first.

It takes several whiffs to get the odor into the upper nasal passage. Before you can taste anything, the substance must be moistened, and the salivary glands supply the moisture. And to be smelled, an odor must be dissolved in the mucus secreted by the nasal membranes. Smell receptors in man, although they do not have the same capacity as in lower animals, still are sensitive enough to allow you to detect a substance diluted to as much as one part in 30 billion. 

No special care is required to guard the senses of taste and smell. You may wish to read, in connection with these senses, the section dealing with care of the mouth and the nose. Touch, sometimes called the fifth sense, is actually five senses: touch, pressure, pain, heat, and cold. Skin: sensations are registered in nerve endings all over the body. Nerve fibers carry them as impulses to the spinal cord and then to the brain where all these feelings register. If you place your hand lightly on any object, the first sensation is touch.

Press harder and you sense pressure. And if the object has a rough surface and you press hard enough, you may feel pain. The senses are closely related though distinct from each other. Also in the skin are separate nerve endings to register heat and cold, which is absence of heat. A discussion of sense organs could go much further but would serve no useful purpose here. 

For example, you can feel the pain of a stomach- ache, but you can also feel hunger, which is quite different. You can also feel thirst, which is not among the sensations classically classified. Some investigators have suggested that the senses might well be divided into a dozen or more categories. In addition to the usual five-sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch-pressure, heat, cold, and pain deserve individual categories, and so, too, the ability to sense vibration, position, and equilibrium. 

HICCUPS - SINGULTUS - PREVENTIVE CARE- foul smell

HICCUPS (SINGULTUS) 

Hiccups are short, sharp inspiratory coughs involving spasmodic lowering of the diaphragm. They may be due to indigestion, overloaded stomach, irritation under the surface of the diaphragm, alcoholism, and many other possible causes. There are many home remedies, anyone of which may work in simple cases: warm applications to the diaphragm region, protrusion of the tongue, holding of the breath, drinking water, applications of cold to the spine, exhaling and inhaling into and from a paper bag. In severe persistent cases, medical attention is required.

PREVENTIVE CARE

 It goes almost without saying that the most common respiratory problem -in fact, the most common disease in the world-is the common cold. You will undoubtedly want to read the special discussion of this. Other conditions, as well as the common cold, may produce nasal congestion. They include hay fever and other allergies, chronic infections, nasal polyps, sinusitis, and a deviated or crooked septum. Enlarged adenoids may also be a cause of nasal congestion in children. 

Your physician, or a specialist to whom he may wish to refer you, can do much now not only to provide relief for such problems but very often to use preventive techniques that will avoid recurrences and possible progression to more complicated problems. Ozena is a disease of the nose involving the turbinates and mucous membranes. It is accompanied by considerable crusting and discharge and a very offensive odor. 

It should have medical attention as soon as possible. Actually, a persistent, foul-smelling discharge in children is much more often caused by some foreign object such as a bean or pencil eraser lodged deep in a nasal passage. Always have a physician take care of this.

An occasional minor nosebleed is no cause for alarm. It may stop by itself-and often does. Cold compresses to the nose and back of the head, and pressure on the soft portion of the nostril on the bleeding side for five minutes, may help. Or the bleeding may stop if the affected nostril is plugged with sterile cotton. Frequent nosebleeds deserve medical attention. 

They may simply mean that a particular small blood vessel in the nose is at fault, and the physician may be able to attend to it in a few minutes. On the other hand, nosebleeds in children sometimes may indicate rheumatic fever. They may also herald onset of typhoid fever. Contrary to a popular notion, they rarely stem from high blood pressure. If your nose bleeds frequently without apparent cause, your physician will try to determine exactly what is involved and then use suitable treatment. 

Should an unsightly nose be changed by plastic surgery?,perhaps. This is a matter to talk over with your physician. If the advises an operation for cosmetic reasons, he will refer you to a surgeon specializing in this type of surgery. Surgery may be appropriate, too, when an abnormal situation.