590 Dr. B. W, EicJiardson April 29, 



he shook forcibly ; the bell moved, and the tongue of it moved, but 

 no sound proceeded from it. The visual centre was dreaming ; that 

 of hearing was dead asleep. 



The subjective dream, the result of some vibration within the body 

 of the sleeper, is the dream of indigestion, of pain, of fever, of self- 

 investigation or of self-contention. 



The dream of indigestion is a dream always of trouble, of fear, of 

 anxiety, of depression. It is, occasionally, attended by the distre^ssiug 

 phenomenon of nightmare, incubus, with its difficult breathing, sense 

 of weight on the chest, palpitation, intermittency, or temporary 

 stoppage of the circulation, and a feeling of some terrible blackness 

 or thunder-cloud over-shadowing life, a coldness of body, and an 

 awakening in a severe alarm, as if death itself were impending and 

 inevitable. The disturbed dreams of childhood are often of this 

 alarming nature, and many a peculiarity of character, many a super- 

 stitious fear of later life, is implanted into sensitive natures by 

 frequently repeated dreams of this order, and especially when, at the 

 early term of life, the surroundings each day are of sombre cast, 

 leading during waking hours to gloomy thoughts, forebodings, and 

 strained contritions for trifling and imaginary offences, against morals, 

 doctrines, or habits, breeding mental doubts and terrors. These 

 subjective dreams are mental discords, disturbances between the 

 voluntary and involuntary nervous systems, which, extending by 

 reflected vibrations from one centre to another, bring all the centres 

 of sensation during the dream into confusion and clamour, until 

 perfect consciousness, with return to common life, is restored. 



The subjective dream of pain differs from the dream of disturb- 

 ance. The dream of pain is the continuance of pain through sleep. 

 It differs according to the character of the pain. After burns, in 

 which vibration at the seat of injury is most intense and continuous, 

 and during which sleep, if it be not artificially induced, comes on 

 from sheer weariness, the dream is literally one of fire and flame. 

 The dream of toothache or of neuralgia is of accident, of struggle 

 attended with a fall, a crush, a blow, or a stab. 



Fever leads to a variable dream — variable, I believe, according to 

 the varying degrees of febrile heat. The active dream, when fever is 

 high, is one of rambling exaltation of mind, followed by depression 

 when fever is low, like the flow and ebb of a tide, from the sensorial 

 organs being, from time to time, at difterent tensions. The fever 

 dream is attended by sensations which extend through the whole of 

 the body, as if the common sensibility were appreciable by touch, with 

 concentration of the sensibility in particular parts. I remember this 

 experience m the course of a nervous remittent to which I was sub- 

 jected in early life, and I have often heard repetition of the sensation 

 from others. The most remarkable illustration of the kind is one I 

 have j)ublished in the ' Asclepiad' for 1884, 2)ages 29-1-5, and which will 

 be found in the library. In this instance a most intelligent observer 

 suffering from enteric fever reported to me the recollection of his 



