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upon the chest, and were on the point of producing suffocation: we awake 

 with a start, to escape from such urgent danger: this is what we call 

 night-mare, an affection that may arise from other causes, hydrothorax, 

 for instance, but which always depends on the difficult passage of blood 

 through the lungs. 



The intellectual faculties which act in dreams, may lead us to certain 

 orders of ideas, which we have not been able to compass while awake. 



Thus, mathematicians have accomplished in sleep, the most complex 

 calculations, and resolved the most difficult problems. It is easily under- 

 stood, how, in the sleep of the outward senses, the sensitive centre must 

 be given up altogether to the combination of ideas in which it must work 

 with more energy. It is seldom that the action of imagination on the 

 genital organs, during waking, goes the length of producing emission: 

 nothing is more common in sleep. 



The human species is not the only one, that in sleep is subject to agita- 

 tions, which are generally comprehended under the name of dreams: 

 they occur in animals, and most in those whose nature is most irritable 

 and sensible. Thus, the clog and horse dream more than the ruminating 

 kinds; the one barks, and the other neighs in sleep. Cows that are 

 suckling their calves, utter faint lowings ; bulls and rams seem goaded 

 by desires, which they express especially, by peculiar motions of their 

 lips. 



After what has l^een said of sleep and dreams, it will not be difficult to 

 explain, why there is so little refreshment of the powers, from sleep that 

 is harassed by uneasy dreams. We often awake, exceedingly fatigued 

 by the distress of imaginary dangers, and the efforts we have made to 

 escape them. 



We have seen the relations of man, with the external world, esta- 

 blished by means of peculiar organs, which, through the intervention of 

 the nerves, all centre in one, the chief and essential seat of the functions 

 of which this chapter treats. As the phenomena of the sensations are 

 brought about by the intervention of an unknown agent, and as like 

 those of electricity and magnetism, they appear not to be subject to the 

 ordinary laws of matter and motion, they have thrown open the widest 

 field to the conjectures of ignorance, and the inventions of quackery. It 

 is for their explanation, that the greatest abundance of theories, and the 

 wildest, have been devised. 



Ott the 23d of December, it is not said in what year, a physician of 

 Lyons, M. Petetin, was called in to a young lady of nineteen, sanguine 

 and robust. She was cataleptic. The doctor employed various reme- 

 dies; and among others, one day bethought himself of pushing over the 

 patient on her pillow: he himself fell with her, half stooping upon the 

 bed, and this led him to the " discovery of the transport of the senses in 

 the epigastrium, to the extremities of the fingers and of the toes." I use 

 his own pompous and barbarous expressions, in announcing his discovery. 

 Our doctor goes on to tell with all gravity, how putting bun on the 

 epigastrium of the patient, she perceived the taste, which was followed 

 by motions of deglutition : if his word is to be taken, hearing, smell, 

 taste, sight, and touch, were all there : the outward senses, being, for 

 the time, completely laid asleep. To give an air of credibility to the mat- 

 ter, he adds, that she saw the inside of her body, guessed what was in 

 the pockets of bystanders, made no mistake in the money in their purses; 

 but the miracle was over, the moment they lapped the objects in a silk 



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