MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 393 



We have yet to speak here of certain other pheno- 

 mena, in which sleep, or states akin to it, assume still 

 more anomalous and startling forms. We allude to 

 conditions of the sensorium, occurring in persons of a 

 peculiar temperament, and often associated with bodily 

 or mental disorder, which are known under the names 

 of trance, catalepsy, mesmeric sleep, &c. names almost 

 as vague as the aberrations they denote. These several 

 states, and even the more familiar incidents of reverie 

 and absence of mind, have all a certain community of 

 character, the differences being chiefly of degree, or due 

 to the immediate causes producing them. They all 

 furnish examples of that disseverment, so to express it, 

 of the sensorial functions, which leaves a portion of 

 them awake, while others lie in a state of slumber 

 more or less profound. What we have said, and shall 

 further have to say, of dreams in their relations to 

 sleep, may perhaps afford the best interpretation of 

 many of these strange phenomena. 



As regards the most notable of them Mesmeric 

 sleep so much has been written and argued to and 

 fro, and the simple question, as it first stood, been 

 turned into so many collateral channels, that we shall 

 not seek to go beyond what is essential to our subject. 

 Is there, we may ask, any such special form or mode 

 of sleep as that denoted under this name produced 

 by a certain subtle influence, emanating from one 

 person, and affecting, even without actual contact, the 

 body of another ? We may say at once that neither 

 in the sleep so produced, nor in the collateral effects 

 assigned to it, do we find anything that has not kindred 



