Synesthesia: The 6th Sense

In 1812, a physician by the name of Georg Tobias Ludwig Sachs was writing about the nature of albinism, having had the condition himself. Color was a recurring topic in his analysis of albinism and as such, in discussing his own experience, he mentioned that “colored ideas” appeared to him. They were “intimate and recurring” and couldn’t be “reckoned with usual sight,” according to Sachs. Sachs is now regarded as the first medically documented case of Synesthesia, a neurological condition in which a sensation in one of the senses evokes a sensation in another. The term quite literally means a “cross-mingling” of the senses, exactly opposite to the more familiar word “anesthesia,” which means “no sensation.”

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