328 OF ATMOSPHERICAL CHAP. 10. 2. 



Persons with an imagination disturbed by 

 fever, and by disorders of the digestive organs, 

 have seen these phantasms in their chambers at 

 night, and have compared them with surround- 

 ing objects which have appeared more vivid, and 

 also with common ideas of imagination which 

 have seemed less vivid ; and by this comparison 

 they have been enabled to determine them as 

 holding a sort of intermediate rank between 

 common imagination and real objects. Those 

 haunting creatures, called Blue Devils, afford an 

 example of this kind. 



Sometimes other organs of sense, as for ex- 

 ample, those of hearing and of touch, perform 

 similar delusive actions; and in a few cases 

 where the contemporaneous hallucinations of 

 several senses have been combined, the spectre 

 has appeared accompanied with the highest 

 proofs of its reality. Dr. Ferriar has publi shed 

 some interesting illustrations of the nature and 

 cause of these sprites, and justly observes, that the 

 mythology of the ancients was highly calculated 

 to favour the indulgence in such illusive phan- 



deavour to explain phantasms of the mind. I must refer the 

 reader to a small work, entitled, SOMATOPSYCONOO- 

 LOGIA, or BODY, LIFE, and MIND, published by R. Hunter. 

 London, 1823, ch. ii. 3. 



