“Meier (_Versuch einer Erklärung des Nachtwandelns_, Halle, 1758, p.
33), once dreamed of being assaulted by several persons who threw him
flat on the ground and drove a stake into the ground between his big and
second toes. While imagining this in his dream he suddenly awoke and
felt a blade of straw sticking between his toes. The same author,
according to Hemmings (_Von den Traumen und Nachtwandeln_, Weimar, 1784,
p. 258) dreamed on another occasion that he was being hanged when his
shirt was pinned somewhat tight around his neck. Hauffbauer dreamed in
his youth of having fallen from a high wall and found upon waking that
the bedstead had come apart, and that he had actually fallen to the
floor.... Gregory relates that he once applied a hot-water bottle to his
feet, and dreamed of taking a trip to the summit of Mount Ætna, where he
found the heat on the ground almost unbearable. After having applied a
blistering plaster to his head, a second man dreamed of being scalped by
Indians; a third, whose shirt was damp, dreamed of being dragged through
a stream. An attack of gout caused the patient to believe that he was in
the hands of the Inquisition, and suffering pains of torture (Macnish).”
The argument based upon the resemblance between stimulus and dream
content is reinforced if through a systematic induction of stimuli we
succeed in producing dreams corresponding to the stimuli. According to
Macnish such experiments have already been made by Giron de
Buzareingues. “He left his knee exposed and dreamed of travelling in a
mail coach at night. He remarked in this connection that travellers
would well know how cold the knees become in a coach at night. Another
time he left the back of his head uncovered, and dreamed of taking part
in a religious ceremony in the open air. In the country where he lived
it was customary to keep the head always covered except on such
occasions.”
Maury[48] reports new observations on dreams produced in himself. (A
number of other attempts produced no results.)
1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip of his nose.
He dreamed of awful torture, viz. that a mask of pitch was stuck to his
face and then forcibly torn off, taking the skin with it.
2. Scissors were sharpened on pincers. He heard bells ringing, then
sounds of alarm which took him back to the June days of 1848.
3. Cologne water was put on his nose. He found himself in Cairo in the
shop of John Maria Farina. This was followed by mad adventures which he
was unable to reproduce.
4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a blistering plaster
was put on him, and thought of a doctor who treated him in his
childhood.
5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed that _chauffeurs_[G]
broke into the house and forced the occupants to give up their money by
sticking their feet into burning coals. The Duchess of Abrantés, whose
secretary he imagined himself in the dream, then entered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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