Insomnia; and Other Disorders of SleepLyman, Henry M. (Henry Munson)
Science
Insomnia; and Other Disorders of Sleep
Lyman, Henry M. (Henry Munson)
Dreams; Insomnia; Sleepwalking
The possibility of thus suggesting, and in some degree guiding, the form
and course of a dream, has been often demonstrated.[58] One of my early
schoolmates, a boy of remarkably susceptible nervous temperament,
furnished an excellent example of this species of direction. Tickling his
nose with a straw made him dream that a dragon-fly was assaulting his
face. On another occasion, a few drops of vinegar placed upon his tongue
caused him to dream of eating oranges. Again, one of his companions
roguishly breathing in his ear the statement that the schoolmaster 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. I finally concluded that
the sound must have been perceived in a dream, and I recalled the fact
that each time, as I woke, the sound of a carriage, passing the house, had
attracted my attention. Undoubtedly, the state of expectancy in which I
was sleeping had operated as the predisposing cause of dreaming, and the
noise of wheels upon the pavement had served as the exciting cause of a
dream in which the sound-vibrations communicated to the brain had produced
by an association of ideas the particular perception which, though asleep,
I was waiting to receive.
In certain cases the impression produced by a dream is so vivid that a
considerable time after waking must elapse before it can be relegated to
its true position in the world of hallucinations. Dreaming, once, that my
wife called to me from another room, I instantly awoke; 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 several persons who were interested to hear
it;--the effect of the dream persisted all the forenoon, as strongly as
that of a real sensation; at last, about three o’clock, as he was stepping
into his carriage, the illusion passed off; he comprehended that he had
been dreaming.”
The following incident from the experience of Prof. Jessen, physician to
the insane asylum in Homheim, near Kiel,[60] still further illustrates
this form of hallucination:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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