1892.] on the Physiology of Dreams. 591 



dreams so soon as he had sufficiently recovered to undertake the task. 

 His dreams were, to those who observed him, deliriums in sleep ; but 

 to him it seemed that his brain was passive to everything external. 

 He was aware that any voluntary activity would be at the expense of 

 his vital centres, on which he depended for life ; whilst at the same 

 time, there was an intelligent connection going on between those parts, 

 so that each could feel what the other was thinking of. After long 

 trouble in this manner, he suddenly woke up in a state of profuse 

 perspiration, and with that the dreams passed away. He was ex- 

 hausted in the extremest degree, but he felt, as he expressively and 

 graphically described it, a " tingling feeling of life," whereupon he 

 felt he had taken a turn and would live through the disease. 



Amongst these subjective dreams there is one which accompanies 

 extremest exhaustion : a state when the body lies between life and 

 death, when the consciousness of all worldly things has faded away so 

 completely that neither words nor acts nor persons are any longer 

 recognisable, but when movements, sights, and sounds are translated 

 in exaltation perhaps through every sense, and certainly through the 

 senses of sight and hearing. I had occasion once to see a gentleman 

 in this condition of temporary death produced by a mechanical arrest 

 of the circulation of the blood in the outgoing current of blood from 

 the heart. Nothing except the dislodgment of the obstructing cause 

 could save life, and hope of this relief was practically given up. The 

 condition was that of a person rapidly passing away in a struggling 

 dream. By a change — I had almost said an accident — which would 

 not occur once in a thousand instances of this nature, the cause of 

 obstruction did suddenly become loosened and carried away, with 

 almost instant return of consciousness, followed ultimately by com- 

 plete recovery to a life afterwards prolonged, in fair health, for 

 twenty-two years. From the lij)s of this gentleman, whilst yet his 

 memory was fresh, I took down the particulars of his dream. All the 

 world had faded from him, and he had not the least knowledge that I 

 had visited him in his sleep and had endeavoured to rouse him to con- 

 sciousness. He was by profession a farmer, a fact which accounts for 

 much of what he experienced through a long and terrible dream, iu 

 which he had been struggling with all kinds of imaginary foes, 

 human and animal : with burglars, horses, and bulls, that got away 

 from him after he had conquered them, allowing him to go to sleep 

 again, and then returning to the contest. These were the causes of 

 the struggles we had witnessed as he lay in the sinking sleep so near 

 to actual dissolution. I asked him how he struggled, and he repeated 

 to the letter the unconscious struggles we had witnessed. 



There is a subjective dream occurring mostly amongst dyspeptics, 

 and which may be considered a dream of regret or of despair. It is a 

 melancholic dream, in which, in the most mysterious manner, con- 

 science, as the dreamer may exj)lain, seems to whisper some strong 

 and yet unintelligible message, or in which some indescribable doubt is 

 conjured up, with so much effect that when the dreamer first awakes he 



