694 Dr. B. W. Bichardson [April 29, 



occasionally dream of the sounds they heard before the period when 

 deafness was established in them ; and I remember an instance in 

 which a child, who was dumb, in consequence of his becoming quite 

 deaf in his second year, would call out in his dreams words which he 

 never pronounced when awake. 



The compound dream is now and then one of suspicion which may 

 attach itself to some particular person who is being dreamed about. 

 This, I have no doubt, is the true explanation of the dream of a 

 woman that Corder was the culprit in the case of the murder of Maria 

 Martin, the victim of what was called the " Bed Barn Murder." Here 

 a process of reasoning goes on in the dream, in the course of which 

 many circumstances combine, as in the construction of circumstantial 

 evidence. Such dreams have been considered as revelations, and 

 received as manifestations of special character and importance. 



Again, the compound dream may be one of hope or of fear, and, 

 according to its nature in these respects, may lead to conclusions 

 which seem like predictions, but which are nothing more than reason- 

 ings from possible or probable data. Once in some thousands of such 

 instances the conclusion drawn may in some degree prove correct, as 

 it might if it had been arrived at in wakefulness ; and, thereupon, 

 the importance of the dream has been magnified to the last degree. 



Amongst the class of compound dreams, we have to take in all 



those which are developed when sleep has been artificially induced 



by the action of the narcotic series of chemical bodies, such as opium, 



Indian hemp, mandragora, chloroform, chloral, methylene, amylene, 



the ethers, carbonic acid, mercaptan, alcohol, coal gas, and other 



narcotising subst.mces. Some years ago I wrote a paper on this topic 



in which I showed that each distinctive substance produces its own 



peculiar dream, probably from the efiect it has over the action of the 



heart, as well as from the direct efi'ect exerted on the sensorium. The 



subject is rich in interest ; but I must not dwell upon it beyond the 



relation of one or two facts. • j -i 



I found that the vapour of the substance called amylene induced 



a sleep attended with a dream which might be called somnambulistic, 



during which acts the most natural were performed by the sleeper 



without consciousness of them or remembrance of them afterwards, 



the consciousness being, for the time, so obliterated that a painful 



surgical operation called forth no expression of pain or anxiety. 



In investigating the action of another sleep-producing vapour, 

 methylic ethei° I discovered a still more curious dream ; one, namely, 

 in which the dreaming person would perform acts under the direction 

 of the observer while quite unconscious of pain and without after- 

 remembrance of that which had occurred during the sleep. This was 

 a kind of artificially induced hysteria, not unlike the condition 

 known as hypnotism presented by very susceptible individuals. 



There is a medicinal plant which in the days of the Greek 

 l)hysicians, and from them up to the thirteenth century, was used as a 

 narcotic. It was called Mandragora. Dioscorides gave a formula for 



