phrases, and at other times they were regularly executed. “Though my mind and body were in a tolerable state of sanity all this time, and these phantasms became so familiar to me that they did not cause me the slightest uneasiness, and though I even sometimes amused myself with surveying them, and spoke jocularly of them to my physician and my wife, I yet did not neglect to use proper medicines, especially when they began to haunt me the whole day and even at night, as soon as I waked. “At last it was agreed that leeches should be again applied to me as formerly, which was actually done, April 20th, 1791, at eleven o’clock in the morning. No person was with me besides the surgeon, but during the operation my chamber was crowded with human phantasms of all descriptions. This continued uninterruptedly till about half an hour after four o’clock, just when my digestion commenced. I then perceived that they began to move more slowly. Soon after their color began to fade, and at seven o’clock they were entirely white. But they moved very little, though the forms were as distinct as before, growing, however, by degrees more obscure yet not fewer in number, as had generally been the case. The phantoms did not withdraw, nor did they vanish, a circumstance which, previous to that time, had frequently happened. They now seemed to dissolve in the air, while fragments of some of them continued visible for a considerable time. About eight o’clock the room was entirely cleared of my fantastic visitors. “Since that time I have felt twice or three times a sensation as if these phantasms were going to reappear, without, however, actually seeing anything. The same sensation surprised me just before I drew up this account, while I was examining some papers relative to these apparitions, which I had drawn up in the year 1791.” While it is doubtless true that variations in the amount of blood in the brain are dependent upon nervous action, it is equally certain that this latter is increased or lessened according as the brain is in a more or less hyperæmic condition. These factors, therefore, react upon each other, and consequently the resulting insomnia is more aggravated than would otherwise be the case. Instances of insomnia dependent upon intense intellectual exertion have already been given, but the following, which I extract from my note-book, will not, I think, prove uninteresting or uninstructive: