56 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



person who, during the continuance of the latter, fancied himself 

 on the brink of a volcano, or broiled beneath an African sun, is 

 transported to some refreshini^ stream, and enjoys precisely the 

 pleasure which such a transition would produce did it actually take 

 place.* The most distressing dreams to which we are subject are, 

 perhaps, those known by the name of night-mare ; an imaginative 

 state of mental suffering depending upon error or excess in diet^ or 

 an actual state of disease. This affection, termed Epliialtes, by the 

 Greeks, and Incubus, or Succubus, by the Romans, was, in the ages 

 of superstition, supposed to result from the actual visit of a fiend, 

 who, by the torments he inflicted during sleep, wished to obtain 

 from the individual visited some concessions to the rulers of the 

 kingdom of eternal night. It is nothing more, however, than a 

 painful dream, produced by a temporary or permanent state of bo- 

 dily disease. Some people are much more prone to incubus than 

 others. Those whose digestion is healthy, whose minds are at ease, 

 and who go supperless to bed, will be seldom troubled with it. 



" Those, again, who keep late hours, study hard, eat heavy sup- 

 pers, or are subject to bile, acid, or hypochondria, are almost sure to 

 be, more or less, its victims. There are particular kinds of food 

 which, in some persons, pretty constantly lead to the same result ; 

 such as cheese, cucumbers, almonds, and other substances difficult of 

 digestion. Hildesheira remarks, that he who wishes to know 

 what night-mare is, must eat chestnuts before going to sleep and 

 drink feculent wine after them."t The dreams produced by night- 

 mare are the very acme of human ill, and the consummation of all 

 human suffering. They are a thousand times more frightful than 

 the fabled visions of necromancy, and transcend in horror all the 



• Macnish, op. cit. The hydropic dreams of seas, lakes, and rivers his 



Imagination wafts him to the sandy desert, and there, thirsty as he is, cheats 

 him with the deceitful mirage. Thus La Vega, in his dream of Salicio 



" I dreamt, beneath the summer beam, 

 Along where Tagus winds his^stream, 

 My playful flock I led to drink. 

 And spend the noontide o'er his brink. 

 1 reached it, but his wonted bed 

 Saw, with surprise, the stream had fled. 

 P^ched up with thirst, I followed still. 

 Thro' its aew course, the wayward rill : 

 I follow'd on, but still my lip 

 Th' illusive wave could never sip 



In this manner are the distressing sensations which disease produces in our 

 dreams continually aggravated by phantoms of promising alleviation, which 

 only give additional poignancy to whatever miseries we may feel. 

 •|- Philosophy of Sleep, 



