I consulted Sir Thomas R. Fraser and Sir T. Lauder Brunton in regard to the nitrite of amyl flush or blush, but they could not refer me to any writer who had made a special study of the mental state consequent on its inhalation, and I have not had opportunities myself of examining the matter.

(21) The fixed rosiness of the young girl's cheeks is not a flush nor is it a blush. It is steadily there, and it expresses no mental emotion. It shows that the small vessels of the face are in a state which admits of its being supplied abundantly with blood. It occurs in a skin area, which lies over a multitude of small muscles, called very frequently into action for a great variety of purposes. The constantly repeated commotion of the muscles of the face can scarcely fail to be attended with changes of the circulation in the skin that closely covers them, which thus perhaps acquires a readiness to allow the appearance of the flush, or the blush, or pallor. The face is a mirror in which to a large extent the mind and character are reflected or disclosed, and it is almost never at rest. And perhaps the rosiness of young health is only a revelation of happiness and comfort under a sense of physical well-being, and of hopes and feelings which then seem sure of fruition. I feel, however, that this is but a limping explanation of the common fixed rosiness of a girl's cheek, and the less common fixed rosiness of a boy's cheek.

(22) In the study of a subject like blushing, all sorts of exceptional cases come under notice and seem to upset general conclusions. Every person supposes himself to know all about such subjects, but it will generally be found that only what is out-of-the-way has arrested attention. This, however, is made to bulk largely, even with those who, on reflection, are quite aware that such exceptional cases can seldom be supported by evidence which is in any sense sufficient. My notes abound with these exceptional cases, communicated to me by friends, but I have set nearly all of them aside as unworthy of consideration. Many of them have clearly no foundation at all, and to discuss these would be to discuss unrealities. Others are set aside because they are not things capable either of proof or disproof, and we are left to be guided by probability, which leaves them engulfed in general conclusions without any disturbance of those conclusions.

Even such a thing as that very old women have been known to blush freely, I have not discussed. It may be a fact, but I have not found a single case which I was able to regard as well attested. I venture to give this example, in order to say that the age of the very old women, whose cases have been reported to me, was often fifty or thereabout, and that the so-called frequent blushing in many of them was quite certainly not blushing at all, but the flushing that so often appears during the climacteric period.

(23) This short study of blushing seems to lead to the following conclusions:-

1. That blushing is always the expression of a special mental state; that it causes another mental state which is a state of mental disorder; that both the blush and this mental disorder come and go almost instantaneously; and that the frequent appearance and disappearance of this disordered mental action does no harm to the health of the mind or body.

2. That blushing is involuntary, cannot be called up by the will, and cannot be feigned.

3. That blushing is the exclusive property of man and occurs in all races of men.

4. That blushing most abounds in the young and practically ceases in advanced age.

5. That bodily expressions of mental states may be much more numerous than we suppose.

6. That persons deprived from birth of sight or hearing, or of both, blush just as ordinary persons do.

7. That the inhalation of nitrite of amyl causes the face to flush, and that this seems to be attended with the same confusion of mind as that which attends the blush of shame.

8. That the flush of anger, the flush induced by violent exercise, the hectic flush of fever, the flush of women at the menopause, the fixed rosiness of youth, and other such things, are altogether different from the blush of shame.