A Treatise on the Incubus, or Night-Mare, Disturbed Sleep, Terrific Dreams and Nocturnal VisionsWaller, John Augustine
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A Treatise on the Incubus, or Night-Mare, Disturbed Sleep, Terrific Dreams and Nocturnal Visions
Waller, John Augustine
Nightmares; Sleep disorders
expedient which deep reflection could suggest. The perpendicular position
of the body, I have found by experience to be the worst in which a
paroxysm of Night-Mare can be borne. The difficulty of respiration, and
all the other symptoms are greatly aggravated, and an additional one is
felt, which greatly increases the sufferings of the patient; it is a
perpetual dread of falling, which appears inevitable, and which prevents
the patient from struggling so much as he would do if in a horizontal
position. Next to this is the position of sleeping with the body bent
forwards, and the head reclining with the face downwards on a table: in
this last position, the difficulty of inflating the lungs is extreme. I
have never been able to discover that any great difference arose between
sleeping on the right or left side. I have always considered it as a
matter of indifference. Although it is possible to render the paroxysm of
Night-Mare more tolerable by any particular position of the body, yet I am
well assured that no position will secure a person from its attacks, to
whom it has once become habitual. I slept for some time in an easy chair,
and found the disease greatly aggravated by it.
There must however be some reason for the universal opinion that it always
attacks persons lying on the back. I was for a long time of opinion
myself, that I was always lying in that position when the paroxysm came
on, but as the disease gained strength, and the paroxysms hung more
pertinaciously upon me, I became more perfectly awake, so as to be able to
discover more accurately the position in which I was lying, and I found
that little faith was to be given to the sensations that may occur during
Night-Mare, as they are the most deceitful of all evidences. It appears to
be one of the symptoms almost inseparable from the disease, that the
patient should appear to himself to be kept down upon the back by some
external force. This sensation I have almost always felt, even when I have
had the evidence of other people, as well as my own conviction when awake,
that I was in reality lying on the side. I cannot help suspecting that
many others have been deceived in a similar manner, and thus made to
believe, that they never had the Night-Mare except when sleeping on their
backs. There is also another sensation which is very apt to deceive the
patient, that is, on the paroxysm going off, and the moment of his
recovering the power of volition, a great confusion of ideas always takes
place, and a person to whom the Night-Mare is not very familiar, generally
imagines that he has recovered himself by some effort of his own,
frequently by turning from his back to his side, sometimes by sitting
upright in bed. These things are all extremely fallacious; there is no
trusting to the senses during a paroxysm of Incubus; nothing short of the
evidence of another person ought to satisfy the patient. I have often been
thoroughly convinced in my own mind that I had succeeded in throwing the
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