1892.] on the Physiology of Dreams. 695 



making a wine, whicli got the name of Morion or death-wine, by 

 steeping the root of the plant, Atropa Mandragora, — a plant which 

 grows in the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, and is akin to our 

 Atropa Belladonna, or deadly nightshade — in wine. Morion, or death- 

 wine, when swallowed was capable of producing such a deep sleep 

 that it veritably led to the phenomena of " shrunk death." This was 

 the wine Juliet took. It caused a dream from which the sleeper 

 awoke with screams and terror. They who by habit drank this sub- 

 stance uttered shrieks on waking, and from that probably came 

 the idea, ridiculous enough, that the plant itself shrieked when it 

 was torn from the earth. I made this wine some years ago, and 

 found that its properties were as stated. It produces its own special 

 dream, a dream, even in lower animals that are susceptible to its 

 influence, of anxiety, excitement, and alarm, ending in sudden return 

 to consciousness in the midst of excitement. 



A dream of a special and remarkable kind is induced by cannabina, 

 the active principle of Indian hemp. My friend the late Professor 

 Polli, of Milan, who experimented on himself with cannabina, found 

 that the dream was recurrent ; and the peculiarity of it was that 

 within a brief period, even of a few seconds, events occurred to the 

 mind that seemed actually to occupy an eternity of time. The facts 

 gave direct experimental proof of the theory that in dreams time plays 

 no important part in the phantasy, but that a whole lifetime of story 

 may be compressed into a minute of existence. 



From the study of the phenomena of dreams we may pass now to 

 that of causes of the phenomena, why we dream and wherefore ? 



In considering this question with the scientific spirit we are led to 

 see that the dream is a pure physical phase of life ; that it depends on 

 two conditions : our own corporeal organisation and the state, for a 

 time, of the surroundings of our life. There is in it no more mystery, 

 no more prescience, no more power, than there is in the dream "of the 

 wakeful day. We dream according to our nature, our habit, and our 

 environment. Hannibal dreamt of Juno : he could not have dreamt 

 of the Virgin, because he did not know of her ; a good Catholic, in 

 these days, would never dream of Juno, because she is to him a non- 

 entity, but he might dream reverently of her who, to him, is both 

 Queen and Mother. And so with all else in the way of dream ; it is 

 a partial mental activity combined with more or less complete physical 

 repose. 



The seat of dreaming is in the locked-up closet of mental im- 

 pressions, the brain and spinal column, commonly called the cerebro- 

 spinal centre, the absorbing centre of vibrations from the surrounding 

 universe, the retainer of those vibrations, and the sender forth of them 

 by the energy employed in thought, deed, and word. 



In the course of its vital activity this nervous centre wears out 

 from its motor work, its power of keeping the great muscles in play, 

 more decisively than from mental labour. ISo the muscular eyelids 



