658 SLEEP-WAKING. 



though she had never learnt more than the first four rules of 

 arithmetic, and unconsciously detailed various philosophical sys- 

 tems, and discussed others which were mentioned to her.P 



Oh the waste of labour, time, and money spent in education, 

 and books, and philosophical apparatus, when mesmerism is such 

 a ready help ! One hysterical young lady at Grenoble, whose 

 case was read to the Philomathic Society of Paris, was able to 

 get through a great deal of business, for in copying letters she 

 read with her left elbow while she wrote with her right hand, q 



I do not doubt the truth of the narration of all the cases of 

 sleep-waking, excepting those in which there was extraordinary 

 knowledge, patients saw through opaque bodies, or the epigas- 

 trium, fingers, and toes, were the seat of extraordinary per- 

 ceptions: and these I shall defer considering till I speak of 

 sleep-waking induced by art. The cases are too numerous, 

 have occurred in too many places, at too many times, and 

 under too many circumstances, are too naturally and respect- 

 ably told, are all too similar and yet too diversified, and yet 

 not marvellous enough, for a reasonable mind to doubt them. 

 They are all evidently examples of partial torpidity and partial 

 excitement, and some also of partial extraordinarily rapid change 

 or peculiar derangement of various portions of the brain, and 

 perhaps of some other parts of the nervous system. The phe- 

 nomena ascend from the faintest common dreaming, or even from 

 disturbed sleep, through plain sleep-walking, and somewhat sin- 

 gular performances, to the most astonishing. Every degree is 

 morbid ; and, to view the cases as any thing else than instances 

 of bodily derangement, would be absurd. The attacks are some- 

 times periodical r ; take place in bad health, and are worse in 

 proportion as the health is worse ; are frequently united with 

 other diseases of the nervous system, catalepsy, hysteria, epi- 

 lepsy, delirium, &c., or are changes from these or change to 

 these ; occur, unless when chronic, most frequently when the 



P See Lancet, Feb. 16. 1833. 



^ Bertrand, 1. c. p. 458. sqq.' 



r Martinet mentions a watchmaker's apprentice who had an attack once a 

 fortnight, and did his work well, astonished on awaking at the progress he had 

 made. The fit began with heat at the epigastrium rising to the head and 

 followed by confusion and complete insensibility, his eyes being fixed and 

 staring. Negretti's attack was always in March. See supra, p. 639. 



