The sense of taste is rarely of legal importance, but when it does come
into importance it is regularly very significant because it involves, in
the main, problems of poisoning. The explanation of such cases is rarely
easy and certain--first of all, because we can not, without difficulty,
get into a position of testing the delicacy and acuteness of any
individual sense of taste, where such testing is quite simple with
regard to seeing and hearing. At the same time, it is necessary when
tests are made, to depend upon general, and rarely constant impressions,
since very few people mean the same thing by, stinging, prickly,
metallic, and burning tastes, even though the ordinary terms sweet,
sour, bitter, and salty, may be accepted as approximately constant. The
least that can be done when a taste is defined as good, bad, excellent,
or disgusting, is to test it in every possible direction with regard to
the age, habits, health, and intelligence of the taster, for all of
these exercise great influence on his values. Similarly necessary are
valuations like flat, sweetish, contractile, limey, pappy, sandy, which
are all dictated by almost momentary variations in well-being.
But if any denotation is to be depended upon, and in the end some one
has to be, it is necessary to determine whether the perception has been
made with the end or the root of the tongue.[184] Longet, following the
experiments of certain others, has brought together definite results in
the following table:
+-----------------------+------------+-------------+
| | | |
|TASTE | TONGUE-TIP | TONGUE ROOT |
| | | |
+-----------------------+------------+-------------+
|Glauber’s salts | salty | bitter |
|Iodkalium | “ | “ |
|Alum | sour | sweet |
|Glycerine | none | “ |
|Rock candy | “ | “ |
|Chlorate of strychnine | “ | “ |
|Natrium carbonate | “ | alkaloid |
+-----------------------+------------+-------------+
In such cases too, particularly as diseased conditions and personal
idiosyncrasies exercise considerable influences, it will be important to
call in the physician. Dehn is led by his experiments to the conclusion
that woman’s sense of taste is finer than man’s, and again that that of
the educated man finer than that of the uneducated. In women education
makes no difference in this regard.