202 OK SLEKJ'. 



The power of corporeal stimulants is very great in 

 producing dreams; v. c. of the semen in producing las- 

 civious trains of ideas, of excessive repletion in causing 

 frightful appearances. We have one instance of a man, 

 in whom any kind of dreams could be induced, if his 

 friends, by gently addressing him, afforded the subject- 

 matter.* This, however, appears to be a preternatural 

 state, between sleeping and waking ; as does also the 

 truly diseased case of sleep-walkers, and that affection 

 which seizes them with what is termed magnetic ecstasy, 

 which is, howev.er, of a very different nature.f 



Locke and others have regarded all dreams as a spe- 

 cies of this mixed state. (C) 



NOTES. 



(A) Respiration also proceeds more slowly. 



(B) It is certain that the supply of arterial blood to every 

 part, and especially to the nervous system, is requisite to its func- 

 tions and its life, and that in proportion to th^ activity of a 

 part is the activity of its supply of arterial blood. Analogy, 

 therefore, renders it more than probable, that, during the inac- 

 tivity of sleep, the brain, having less occasion for arterial blood, 

 has a less vigorous circulation than during the waking state ; and 

 we know that whatever diminishes the ordinary determination of 

 blood to the brain (321), or impairs the movement of the blood 



* Beattie, Dissertations Moral and Critical. Lond. 1783. 4to. p. 217. 

 f G. Gotll. Richtcr, De Static Mixto somni et vigilia: quo Dormicntea multa 

 $ T igila*tium muncra obeunt. Getting. 1756. 4to. 

 Wienholt, 1. c. Vol. iii. P. i. p. 1ft. 





