f ~^\ 



SLEEP-WAKING. 629 



the least knowledge of what she had been doing, and feel quite 

 ashamed and beg pardon, when informed that she had said we made 

 a fool of her. After some hours, or days, the attack would return. 

 But, before she remained permanently awake, shesome times fell 

 back repeatedly into the sleep-waking : and nothing could be 

 more striking than to see her eyes suddenly fixed unconsciously, 

 and then all the phenomena of perfect external insensibility and 

 talking begin again in less than a minute : and, in a few minutes, 

 to observe her become suddenly still, look wild or fall fast asleep 

 for an instant, rub her eyes, be sentient of every thing around her, 

 smile, and in short in less than a minute be wide awake, without 

 any knowledge of the state in which she had just been. As she 

 could not be awakened by the strongest agency applied to her ex- 

 ternal senses, I resolved to try the effect of producing an internal 

 sensation, and heightening her volition over her voluntary muscles. 

 I took her off the bed, and found she could not stand. Two of us 

 supported her erect, and lessened the support now and then, so 

 that she might feel she was falling. Her knees bent, and she 

 would have fallen, had we not held her up. This was repeated 

 a few times, till at last she seemed to feel the ground a little 

 with her feet, and, when we lessened our support, her knees bent 

 less : at length she stood pretty well. Then I forced her on, 

 and, though her legs at first dragged, she at last feebly attempted 

 stepping, soon she walked, and, when she walked firmly, being 

 led on quickly by one of us on each side, she suddenly awoke. 

 This was all the work of not five minutes. I presently laid her 

 down on the bed, and she in a minute relapsed into her old 

 condition : I raised and walked her again, and she was instantly 

 restored ; and remained without any return for a week. I did 

 not afterwards succeed in this way. When the affection re- 

 turned it was not so marked. She had some power of perceiving 

 persons, and hearing and feeling, so that she gave a certain amount 

 of answer and expressed some uneasiness on being pinched. 

 After a few days such attacks ceased, but she fell into the deli- 

 rium only of the state, ecstatic delirium : having the full use 

 of her external senses, her volition over her muscles, knowing 

 where she was, and active in all her intellectual faculties and 

 feelings, saying she felt as if her brain was coming out and was 

 too big for her head, and begging me to cut her head off; in short, 

 being wide awake, but wandering unconnectedly from one subject 



T T * 



