692 



SLEEP. 



was never perceived in the sleep-talking state; 

 arid if the interlocutor addressed to her any 

 questions or observations that did not fall in 

 with her train of thought, they were completely 

 disregarded. By a little adroitness, however, 

 she might be led to talk upon almost any 

 subject; a transition being gradually made from 

 one to another by means of leading questions. 

 The well-known case of the officer, narrated 

 by Dr. James Gregory, is one of the same in- 

 termediate class; rather allied, in our appre- 

 hension, to somnambulism than to ordinary 

 dreaming. This gentleman, who served in the 

 expedition to Louisburgh in 1758, was in the 

 habit of acting his dreams ; and their course 

 could be completely directed by whispering 

 into his ear, especially if this was done by a 

 friend with whose voice he was familiar; so 

 that his companions in the transport were in 

 the constant habit of amusing themselves at 

 his expense. At one time they conducted 

 him through the whole progress of a quarrel, 

 which ended in a duel ; and when the parties 

 were supposed to be met, a pistol was put into 

 his hand, which he fired, and was awakened 

 by the report. On another occasion they 

 found him asleep on the top of a locker or 

 bunker in the cabin, when they made him 

 believe he had fallen overboard, and exhorted 

 him to save himself by swimming. He imme- 

 diately imitated all the motions of swimming. 

 They then told him that a shark was pur- 

 suing him, and entreated him to dive for his 

 life. He instantly did so, with such force as 

 to throw himself entirely from the locker upon 

 the cabin -floor, by which he was much bruised, 

 and awakened of course. After the landing 

 of the army at Louisburgh, his friends found 

 him one day asleep in his tent, and evidently 

 much annoyed by the cannonading. They 

 then made him believe that he was engaged, 

 when he expressed great fear, and showed an 

 evident disposition to run awa}'. Against this 

 they remonstrated ; but, at the same time, in- 

 creased his fears, by imitating the groans of the 

 wounded and the dying ; and when he asked, 

 as he often did, who was down, they named 

 his particular friends. At last they told him 

 that the man next himself in the line had fallen, 

 when he instantly sprung from his bed, rushed 

 out of the tent, and was roused from his danger 

 and his dream together, by falling over the tent- 

 ropes. After these experiments, he had no 

 distinct recollection of his dreams, but only a 

 confused feeling of oppression and fatigue; and 

 used to tell his friends that he was sure they 

 had been playing some trick upon him. This 

 is another point of conformity with somnam- 

 bulism ; one of whose most distinctive pecu- 

 liarities it is, that neither the trains of thought 

 nor. any of the events of the somnambulistic 

 state are remembered in the ordinary waking 

 condition, though the impression of the feelings 

 strongly excited during that state, is some- 

 times continued. Both the trains of thought 

 and the events of the somnambulistic state, 

 however, are frequently remembered with the 

 utmost vividness on the recurrence of that 

 state, even at a very distant interval : and of 



the interval, however long it may have been, 

 there is no consciousness whatever. The 

 same thing, but more rarel y, occurs in dreaming ; 

 the dreamer sometimes recollecting a previous 

 dream, and even taking up and continuing its 

 thread, although he could not in the least 

 retrace it in his waking state. 



A remarkable case of spontaneous somnam- 

 bulism, which occurred within our own ex- 

 perience, will serve to illustrate many of the 

 most characteristic features of the condition 

 in question. The subject of it was a young 

 lady of highly nervous temperament ; and the 

 affection occurred in the course of a long and 

 trying illness, in which almost every form of 

 hysteria, simulating tetanus, epilepsy, coma, 

 and paralysis, had successively presented itself. 

 Although natural somnambulism ordinarily 

 arises out of ordinary sleep, yet in this instance 

 the patient usually passed into the somnam- 

 bulistic condition from the waking state; the 

 transition being immediately manifested by the 

 peculiar expression of the countenance. In 

 this condition her ideas were at first entirely 

 fixed upon one subject tne death of her only 

 brother, which had occurred some years pre- 

 viously. To this brother she had been very 

 strongly attached ; she had nursed him in his 

 last illness ; and it was perhaps the return of the 

 anniversary of his death about the time when 

 the somnambulism first occurred, that gave 

 to her thoughts that particular direction. She 

 talked constantly of him, retraced all the cir- 

 cumstances of his illness, and was unconscious 

 of anything that was said to her which had not 

 direct reference to this subject. On one oc- 

 casion she mistook her sister's husband for 

 her lost brother ; imagined that he was come 

 from heaven to visit her; and kept up a long 

 conversation with him under this impression. 

 This conversation was perfectly rational on 

 her side, allowance being made for the funda- 

 mental errors of her data. Thus, she begged 

 her supposed brother to pray with her ; and on 

 his repeating the Lord's Prayer, she interrupted 

 him after the sentence " forgive us our tres- 

 passes," with the remark, " But you need not 

 pray thus ; your sins are already forgiven." 

 Although her eyes were open, she recognised 

 no one in this state, not even her own sister, 

 who, it should be mentioned, had not been at 

 home at the time of her brother's illness. 



On another occasion, it happened that, 

 when she passed into this condition, her 

 sister, who was present, was wearing a 

 locket, containing some of their deceased 

 brother's hair. As soon as she perceived 

 this locket, she made a violent snatch at it, 

 and would not be satisfied until she had got 

 it into her own possession, when she began 

 to talk to it in the most endearing and even 

 extravagant terms. Her recognition of this 

 locket, when she did not perceive that her 

 sister was the wearer of it, was a very curious 

 fact, which may be explained in two ways, 

 each of them in accordance with the known 

 laws of somnambulism. Either the concen- 

 tration of her thoughts on this one subject 

 caused her to remember only that which was 



