Insomnia; and Other Disorders of Sleep

his dream

s, XXX

ss. As a consequence of the harmonious function of the organs of sense, each one supplementing and correcting the information furnished by the others, a continuous process of perception and logical thought is maintained. But, along with the procession of ideas which are clearly conceived by the mind, the field of consciousness is also invaded by a cloud of half formed perceptions, which are too imperfect and fleeting to occupy the attention. As in the act of vision, though the periphery of the visual field is crowded with a whole world of objects dimly perceived without challenging particular attention, onl

rowing of the stream of related ideas. Since this process of suppression, just mentioned, is not an absolute quantity, but a variable factor, the polygon of physical forces within the brain and the corresponding succession of ideas in consciousness must necessarily be in a state of continual change. Consequently, our dreams must be as variable as the clouds that drift upon the currents of the air. As, on a hot day in summer, when the equatorial draught has ceased to guide the wind, we may observe all manner of local tides among the masses of vapor which arise from the earth, so, in sleep, when the guiding influence of the senses is withdrawn, the ideas that still arise ar

most wholly disconnected from the muscular organs. In this state the sleeper may desire to perform some act-he may wish to move his limbs or to cry out aloud, but he can move neither hand nor foot, he cannot utter a sound. In other instances a partial connection between the will and the locomotive organs persists, and various orderly movements can still be produced. In like manner the control of the will over the succession and association of ideas

n. When the capacity of the brain is depressed by drugs or by disease, or by sleep, the moral sensibilities are the first to disappear. Hence the non-moral character of the impressions usually experienced during the act of dreaming. We feel neither surprise nor regret at the i

dance of the senses and from the control of the will. A great variety of dreams may thus be admitted, ranging all the way from those products of mere absence of mind w

a hot day. A feeling of causeless amusement began to occupy my mind. I seemed to be smiling all over without any apparent reason for hilarity. Then the walls of the room in which I sat seemed to recede to a vast distance. My attention became riveted upon a little picture which hung against the wall before me. It was a sunset scene, painted upon a canvas scarcely larger than my hand. As the wall upon which it was placed seemed to recede, the canvas expanded until I beheld a glorious landscape bounded by a range of snow-capped mountains flushe

fact that it was a picture upon which my attention was fixed-one picture reminding me of others which I had seen. The loss of proportion in the view-the exaggeration and distortion of all the relations of time and space, which made the unreal seem real, and conferred grandeur upon commonplace objects, was undoubtedly occasioned by a modification in the molecular structure of the organs of special sense and of perception under the influence of hasheesh. The change thus effected was of a character to diminish the force of sensory impressions derived through the aid of the muscles and nerves of

uccession of illusions. My head seemed to expand to the size of a bushel basket; then it would slowly contract again. My body seemed to grow out of shape into the most distorted forms of rickets. Audible sounds seemed to come from the most remo

nternal impressions. The brain and the nerves were in a condition of irritable weakness, caused by disease, which interfered with the normal generation and association of ideas. Having thus partially escaped from the control of the senses and the will, the m

appeared the figure of a very small midshipman, talking to a gigantic personage, the captain of the ship. This was an incident which I had actually witnessed forty years before. I was, at first, somewhat puzzled in the attempt to account for the occurrence of a vision so apparently incongruous with the subject matter of the book; but a little reflection convinced me that the exciting cause of this seemingly involuntary act

re or less disorderly series of ideas occupies the mind. This constitutes a dream. The difference, therefore, between waking thought and a dream is analogous to the difference between a page upon which the words have been arranged in a rational order, and another page upon which some of the same words have been set down at random. Inasmuch as the majority of our sensations are derived through the organs of sight, and since the larger portion of the sensory region of the cortex of the brain is concerned in the act of vision, it is no more than might be expected that the ideas suggested in sleep should generally proceed from the visual apparatus of the brain. The superior power of visual impressions to attract attention may also serve to explain the fact that the majority of dreams are composed of images that were originally perceived in the ac

r was after him with a long rattan, he bounded out of bed, and could scarcely be restrained from bursting out of doors in his evident alarm. I was myself awakened, one night, by the ringing, as it seemed, of my doorbell; but, hastening at once to the door, no one was there. As I was expecting a call from a certain patient, I concluded that the bell had been rung by an impatient messenger who could not wait. Falling again asleep, I was a second time startled by a similar ring. Looking out of the window above the door, it was evident that no one was there.

e; and only the fact that she was with me could satisfy me that it was all a dream. Taine[59] relates that "M. Baillarger dreamed one night that a certain person had been appointed editor of a newspaper; in the morning he believed it to be true, and mentioned it to sever

n, physician to the insane asylum in Homheim, near Kiel,[

f this patient, but that only the prospective departure of a woman of the same name had been reported to me. This compelled me to inquire more particularly after the circumstances, and accordingly I lighted a candle, rose, dressed myself, and went to the room of the head nurse. To my surprise I found him only half dressed, and, in reply to my inquiry after the people who had called for the patient, he said, with an expression of astonishment, that he did not know anything of it, as h

It is easy to show this belief by many incidents which came under my notice. For instance, one morning, when it was important to me to get away from a camp on the Essequibo River, at which I had been detained for some days by the illness of some of my Indian companions, I found that one of the invalids, a young Macusi, though better in health, was so enraged against me that he refused to stir, for he declared that, with great want of consideration for his weak health, I had taken him out during the night and had made him haul the canoe up a series of difficult c

anding the intensity of the dream, its true character is recognized by the dreamer during the very act of vision. Thus, I once dreamed that I saw a young girl standing before me. So vivid was the perception, that the actual presence of such a person could not have produced a more perfect impression upon the waking brain. Yet, at the same instant, I comprehended the fact that

point in accidental states of the bodily organization. If attention be paid to this matter, it will be observed that all unusual modes of dreaming, and all extraordinary vividness of dream-impressions can be connected with some departure from the physiological conditions of quiet sleep. Either disease, or exhaustion, or emotional disturbance, or narcotic intoxication of the brain may be noted as the immediate cause of such derangement of the cerebral functions. After drinking several cups of coffee before retiring, I dreamed of a large yellow flowe

at once. In the morning he still remembered his dream; and, on adding up the columns, found that he had actually produced the right sum in each case. A college student of my acquaintance, who was puzzled by a geometrical proposition, wrote out the correct solution during his sleep. This was something more than simple dreaming; it trenched upon actual somnambulism. Another acquaintance dreamed

uggest ideas to the mind, the resulting congeries will consist of discordant and incoherent elements. But if wakefulness is limited to a particular organ of the body or to a circumscribed territory of the brain, the resulting impressions in consciousness should be correspondingly restricted, and will manifest a more orderly connection with each other. In some cases a tendency to simultaneous wakefulness of particular portions of the cerebral register seems to become habitual, so that the same set of ideas may be often renewed in the same order during sleep, constituting a repetition of the same dream. In this

bery. In this garden I discovered one of my brothers and a friend, who is widely known in literary circles, engaged in flying a kite. With great adroitness they had succeeded in causing the kite-string to describe in the air the outline of the letter Z. I congratulated them on the adoption of so truly scientific a me

uring the previous evening I had been examining a number of East Indian photographs. Among the most remarkable of them was a picture of the glorious gardens of the Taj, at Agra. Another represented the ruined Buddhist tower at Sarnath, a structure remarkable for the numerous triangular figures carved as ornaments upon its sides. Hence the garden and the zigzag kite-string in the dream. During the day before, while conversing with a neighbor regarding the financial misfortunes of an acquaintance, I had remarked that if he had stopped kite-flying, and had settled down to legitimate business at last, he wou

spheric pressure, the visions of the night become wonderfully exaggerated in every particular. During a voyage at sea, while suffering considerably with thirst, one night I dreamed that a fountain of sparkling water suddenly appeared before me. A young girl dipped a pitcher in the flowing stream, and held it out, all dripping with delicious coolness, for me to drink. Pressing eagerly forward, I awoke, to find myself sitting up in my narrow berth, with hands extended for the draught. Every narrative of shipwreck is filled with similar experiences. Slow starvation is always accompanied by dreams of singular intensity and persistence. As an illustration of the corresponding influence of previous emotion, I ma

xamining the doors and the windows, and found it impossible to close and to fasten them. I then took a bath, dressed myself, and walked out into a large garden behind the house. It was filled with tropical trees, of which some were young. The old ones, which I recognized after an absence of thirty years, astonished me by their surprising luxuriance. A lovely, trailing convolvulus, in full bloom, attracted my admiration. After walking for some time I came upon a plum tree which was very small when I left home, and had now reached a height not exceeding twelve feet. This slow growth excited considerable surprise on my part. Returning to the house, I passed the day with my pare

looking fellow, who was bustling around in his shirt-sleeves. He immediately put one of the jewels into his mouth, when I heard something crack, as if either his teeth or the diamond had split. Consoling myself with the recollection that, if broken, a diamond could be mended with cement, I asked for a certificate of deposit. While this was being written, the entire building slipped away from over us, and glided down the slope of the mountain, towards the ocean, leaving us, and all that had been within the house, uncovered in the open air. This did not disconcert any one. The jeweler finished his writing; I pocketed the receipt, and with my brother pursued our walk through the mountain forests beyond the crater of the volcano. Presently we arrived at an eminence from which we could look down upon the ocean, and could see the line of the coast prolonged for many miles on either side of a cape of land. The western coast was very grand-mountain promontories rising behind each other as far as the eye could reach. Having feasted our eyes with this magnificent panorama of earth and sea and sky, we turned away in the direction of a grove, in which was visible a large building of stone, with castellated walls, and turrets with pointed roofs at the corners. My brother informed me that this was a German settlement, called Little Clacius. Approaching the castle, we were received in a magnificent hall by a beautiful woman who offered to conduct us through the building. She led us through a series of lofty rooms, splend

f extensive bodily disturbance, opening a wide range of territory from which impressions were communicated to the morbidly sensitive brain. The unusual permanence of the whole dream in memory may be explained by the observation of Maury, that the ease with which dreams are recollected varies inversely with the depth of the sleep in which they occur. Dreams which are produced in sound sleep are seldom recalled after waking, because they are but slightly connected with impressions received by the brain during wakefulness.[62] But dreams which occ

a terrible pain in the head, and that her husband and a physician were applying a cupping glass to the back of her neck. This woke her up, and she found that she was actually suffering with a very severe headache. Another lady, shortly after confinement, dreamed that her baby had teeth, and that it was biting her nipple. Next day she discovered a tender spot in the breast, which rapidly developed a mammary abscess. Forbes Winslow[63] has collected a considerable number of similar cases. In certain instances no

n a cry for help, but the will is powerless to reach the necessary muscles, and no movement results. In such cases the portion of the brain in which the will resides is awake, but the conducting fibres whi

lady who was about to embark upon the ill-fated steamer Arctic, dreamed so vividly of shipwreck that she refused to take passage, and thus escaped the frightful disaster which overwhelmed the ship and its numerous passengers. Max Simon[64] relates the case of a lady who, in spite of a similar warning, embarked upon a steamship and lost her life, through the explosion of the boiler during the voyage. On another occasion[65] a noble lady dreamed that a wing of the palace in which her children were sleeping was about to fall down. Starting up, she called her waiting maids, and insisted that they should br

ingly prophetic vision is remembered, but the cases of discrepancies between vision and result are not recorded, and are soon forgotten. This opinion may very probably be correct in the vast majority of instances; but, if so, we are not in a position to assert any scientific demonstration of the fact. There is, moreover, so far as the ancient religious view is concerned, a certain transcendental sense in which it is true that God may guide his creatures through the age

ly overtasked, I always woke up in the night whenever about to receive a call to a patient. Before the sound of footsteps became audible on the sidewalk, I would wake. Presently some one would be heard, approaching the house, and then the doorbell would ring. So often was this experience repeated, that I learned to expect a summons whenever awakened during the night. Gradually, however, as my health improved with rest, this morbid excitability disappeared, and has never been renewed. It seems probable that in this example the sensitiveness of the brain during sleep was so great that audible impressions were received with vigor sufficient to awake consciousness before they were sufficiently strong to arrest the attention when actually awake. The extreme sensibility of the brain, under certain conditions, to impressions from a distance, is further illustrated by the experience of persons laboring under diseases which produce serious departures from a healthy cerebral circulation. Thus, one of my

d to her mother and sister, who were driving together at some distance from home. After a short time they actu

ions which our healthy organs are usually incapable of apprehending. When such a brain during sleep is unoccupied with the ordinary objects of sensation, feeble impulses, which usually remain unnoticed, may sometimes suffice to arrest the attention. We may thus explain the possibility

air, but started up wide awake exactly at one, ejaculating, 'By Jove, he's down!' and seeing him come out of a drawing-room into a brightly illuminated landing, catching his foot in the edge of the top stair, and falling headlong, just saving himself by his elbows and hands. (The house was one which I had never seen, nor did I know whe

vents lends them a marvelous aspect; yet there is really nothing about them any more wonderful or preternatural than the demonstrated possibility of telegraphic signaling across the sea without the intervention of an electric wire.[67] Under ordinary circumstances a metallic conductor must serve

n peculiarly sensitive organizations. The same extraordinary receptivity occasionally seems to attend the act of dreaming. For example, one of my acquaintances, a lady of a highly wrought nervous temperament, the wife of a distinguished physician in a neighboring State, dreamed one night that a favorite cousin, a beautiful little girl, who lived at a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, was very dangerously ill. She saw the child lying on its mother's lap, evidently at the point of death, when some one brought a tub of warm water and proceeded to give the patient a bath. This revived the little one so that she recovered. The dream made a very considerable impression upon my friend, by reason of its peculiar character, and because dreaming was

another in the acts of telepathy recently investigated by the Society for Psychical Research. Something similar is frequently observed in connection with the p

aign. No one of his family had the slightest information or suspicion of his illness, until the night before his arrival, when his father dreamed that the absent son was sick, and would arrive the next day, at an hour unusual for travelers coming from the South. So vivid was this dream, and so powerful was

the evolution of his dream as an hallucination, even after waking. Thus, on one occasion, during a malarial fever, I dreamed of seeing a friend who lived at a great distance. So vivid was the impression that I started up awake; and there, at the foot of the bed, in broad daylight, was my friend, looking calmly at me. Several seconds, at least, were required to dissipate the vision. In an article already quoted,[69] Sir Edmun

r 1876, I went to my study an hour or two after dinner, and wrote out my judgment. It was then about half-past eleven. I rang for the butler, gave him the envelope, and told him to give it to the reporter who should call for it. I was in bed before twelve. I am a very light sleeper, and my wife a very heavy one. Indeed, it is difficult to rouse her

in his usual dress, and was certainly quite sober, and said, 'I know that I am guilty of an unwarrantable intrusion, but finding that you were not in your study I have ventured to come here.' I was losing my temper, but something in the man's manner disinclined me to jump out of bed to eject him by force. So I said, simply, 'This is too bad, really; pray, leave the room at once.' Instead of doing so he put one hand on the foot-rail, and gently, and as if in pain, sat down on the foot of the bed. I glanced at the clock, and saw that it was about twenty minutes past one. I said, 'The butler has had the judgment since half-past eleven; go and get it.' He said, 'Pray forgive me; if you knew all the circumstances, you would. Time presses. Pr

to be taking it down in short-hand; it might have taken two or three minutes. When I finished, he rose, thanked me for excusing his intrusion and for t

ing; and her husband told her what had happened, an

elve to ask him when he would be ready for bed. He said, "I have only the judge's judgment to get ready, and then I have finished." As he did not come, she went up again, about a quarter to one, to his room and peeped in, and thought she saw him writing, but she did not disturb him. At half-past one she again went to him and spoke to him at the

e Court, before

v

this case to the following effect'-and then fo

st showed he died of some form of heart disease, and had not, and could not have left the house without the knowledge of at least his wife, if not of his servants. Not wishing to air my 'spiritual experience' for the benefit of the press or the public, I kept the matter a

nine years my memory is quite clear on the subject. I have not the least doubt, I

had done everything as usual, adding that no one could have got in if even he had not locked the door, as there was no handle outside-which there was not. I examined the coolies and other servants, who all said they opened the door as usua

where I lived, and his infirmities prevented him from walking

nd Ho

d, or was quite forgetful regarding the actual time of the editor's death. That person was, in fact, alive and in his usual health at the time of his supposed apparition in the judge's chamber, and did not die till between eight and nine o'clock on the same morning. He had "attended a temperance committee mee

but discovered nothing. The sound ceased when he arose. On returning to bed, he heard the sound of music again, and was at the same time surprised by the appearance of three persons, standing near each other in his chamber, opposite the foot of his bed. It was his habit to sleep with the gaslight burning feebly, near the head of his bed. He turned the gas on to its full power, and inspected the intruders. They appeared to be musicians, who were humming and singing, as if in preparation for a musical performance. He rang a bell, which summoned his man servant. John soon arrived, and was ordered to put the strangers out. 'There is nobody here, sir,' was John's reply to the order. For a moment Mr. A. was not only amazed, but alarmed. 'What!' he exclaimed, 'do you see no one there?' 'No one,' said John. 'Go where those chairs are, and move them,' was Mr. A.'s next direction. John did so. The strangers stepped aside, but did not go out. By this time Mr. A. had gathered his wits about him, and was satisfied that he was the victim of a hallucination; and he determined to observe its phenomena carefully. Accordingly, he bade his servant depart, and prepared to watch his visitors. But they were so life-like and human, that he was again staggered, and recalling John, told him to go for the house-keeper. She soon came, and on being interrogated, confirmed John's statements that there were no strangers in the chamber and no sounds to be heard. Convinced by the testimony of two witnesses, Mr. A. yielded to the decision of his reason, and again resolved to go on with the investigation of the strange phenomena. The musicians had now resumed their position, near the window and opposite the foot of the bed. Mr. A. turned the light of the gas full upon them. He looked

ards the close of life, two or three years later, "incoherence, delirium, stupor, and the like, indicated with sufficient certainty the presence of severe

ne, so that in sleep a dream may lead the judgment to decisive conclusions that were scarcely recognized or heeded during the hours of wakefulness. In this way we may learn to understand how the anxieties experienced by the husband of the Virgin Mary may have ripened into a dream, of intensity sufficient to guide his subsequent action. Nothing could be more natural for one, like him, ignorant of physiology and of second c

the face of the earth, waiting in agony for the awful decision of their fate. Finally the heavens were opened, and Jesus appeared, dividing the wicked from the good. As he drew near the place where she was standing, she could no longer endure her anxiety regarding the destiny of her daughter; she rushed forward, and implored the Divine Judge to spare her child. With a look of ineffable compassion he assured the trembling suppliant that her prayer was granted, and she awoke in a state of great agitation, but much comforted

attention upon the comparatively limited circle of ideas which are thus produced, greatly increases the intensity of the resulting impressions upon the mind in consciousness. Hence the grandeur of the visions which may thus arise; hence, also, the possibility of their construction in accordance with fact rather than with fancy; as in the case of the visions of the ancient Hebrew prophets. As the darkness

ad formed his determination to ride to Edinburgh next day and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and, with all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purpose: His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, as he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr. R. thought that he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him because he had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to recover any evidence in support of his belief. 'You are right, my son,' replied the

dream, a very old man; without saying anything of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but, on mentio

f gold. In the lawyer's case the cerebral register only needed the stimulus afforded by the association of ideas, in order to make it again place before the mind impressions which had long subsided below the level of consciousness. For Mr. R., sleep afforded the limitation of cerebral function needful for a concentration of attention sufficient to penetrate to the level of the residual vibrations which persisted as the sole representatives of the original impressions through which his knowledge of the event had been primitively obtained. Parallel examples are furnished by the cases of individuals who, upon their death-beds, during the dissolution of the brain, have resumed a long disused vocabulary, speaking the language and thinking the thoughts of their childhood. "He 'babbled of green fields,'" said Mistress Qui