It is not always that the patient experiences unpleasant sensations in
these nocturnal attacks, which were not unfrequently of a curious nature.
The ancients thought that these intruders were sometimes sportive Fauns;
hence Pliny calls the affection _ludibria Fauni_. At a subsequent period,
superstition replaced the Fauns by _Incubi_, or evil spirits, who visited
the earth to destroy virtuous women; and it was once gravely discussed by
the Sorbonne, whether the offspring of such an union should be considered
human, or the fair lady's reputation injured by the involuntary act of
giving a young incubus to the world. The absurd stories of the pranks of
the _Succubi_ and _Incubi_ are well known.
Ephialtes has been known to be epidemic, and has attacked numbers at a
time. Caelius Aurelianus informs us that Silimachus, a disciple of
Hippocrates, observed the phenomenon in Rome, when the disease generally
proved fatal. It is more than probable that in these cases the night-mare
was merely symptomatic of other complaints. A French physician, Dr.
Laurent, however, has related a very curious instance of a species of
night-mare attacking an entire regiment; he thus relates the singular
occurrence:
"The first battalion of the regiment Latour d'Auvergne, of which I was the
surgeon, was garrisoned at Palmi, in Calabria, when we received a sudden
order at midnight to march with all possible speed to Tropea; a flotilla
of the enemy having appeared off the coast. It was in the month of June;
we had a march of forty miles of the country, and only arrived at our
destination at seven o'clock the following evening, having scarcely halted
during those thirty-one hours, and suffered considerably from the heat of
the sun. On our arrival the men found their rations cooked and their
quarters prepared; but, having arrived the last, our regiment had the
worst accommodation, and eight hundred men were pent up in a building
scarcely capacious enough for half the number. The soldiers were in
consequence much crowded, and slept upon the straw without any bedding,
and most uncomfortably. The building was an abandoned monastery; and the
inhabitants warned us that we should not be able to occupy it quietly, as
it was haunted every night. We laughed at their superstitious fears, but
were much amazed when, towards midnight, we heard loud cries, and the
soldiers rushed tumultuously, and in evident terror, out of their rooms.
Being interrogated as to the causes of this alarm, they all affirmed that
the devil was in the abbey; that they had seen him enter in the shape of a
large black dog, that had jumped upon their breasts and disappeared. To
convince them of the absurdity of their fears was of no avail; not a
single man could be persuaded to return to his quarters, and they
wandered about the town until daybreak. On the following morning I
questioned the most steady non-commissioned officers and the oldest
soldiers; and though under ordinary circumstances they were strangers to