644- SLEEP-WAKING. 



she told, before the fit came on, to what place she was to run, 

 she said she dreamt the night before that she was to run to that 

 place ; and though they sometimes dissuaded her from going to 

 a particular place, as to my house, for example, where they said 

 the dogs would bite her, she said she would go that way and no 

 other. When she awoke, and came out of her delirium, she found 

 herself extremely weak, but soon recovered her strength, and was 

 nothing the worse for it, but, on the contrary, was much the 

 worse from being restrained from running. When she awoke and 

 came to herself, she had not the least remembrance of what had 

 passed while she was asleep. Sometimes she would run upon 

 the top of the earthen fence which surrounded her father's little 

 garden ; and though the fence was of an irregular figure, and 

 very narrow at top, yet she never fell from it, nor from the top 

 of the house, upon which she would sometimes get, by the assist- 

 ance of this fence, though her eyes were then likewise shut." 

 Once, in a fit, she had a violent desire to drink of water from a 

 particular well, and on their giving her other water, " she would 

 not let it come near her, but rejected it with great aversion; but 

 when they brought her water from this well, she drank it greedily, 

 her eyes being all the while shut. Before her last fit came upon 

 her, she said that she had just three leaps to make, and she would 

 neither leap tior run more. And accordingly, having fallen asleep 

 as usual, she leaped up upon the stone at the back of the chim- 

 ney, and down again ; and having done this three times, she kept 

 her word, and never leaped or ran more. She is now in perfect 

 health."" 



In a recent American case of somnambulism, to which I shall 

 presently refer, the patient, with her eyes closed, " sometimes 

 engaged in her usual occupations, and then her motions were 

 remarkably quick and impetuous ; she moved with astonishing 

 rapidity, and accomplished whatever she attempted with a cele- 

 rity of which she was utterly incapable in her waking state." 



In another, though the patient, in her fits of sleep, while her 

 eyes were open and she was talking to her acquaintance, making 

 ironical applications to them under feigned names, was perfectly 

 insensible to pricking with needles, to wrenching her fingers, to 

 brandy and hartshorn put into her eyes and mouth, Spanish snuff in 



" Ancient Metaphysics. 



