274 report — 1865. 



talking with considerable correctness on the topics of the day, seizing ob- 

 jects with precision, and showing scarcely a perceptible gradation during re- 

 covery from mental inebriation to perfect and sober consciousness. In a psy- 

 chological point of view this fact is doubly interesting, for the expression of 

 consciousness is but a semblance. The person on recovery does not remember 

 the period when, to the bystander, he seemed as wide awake as one unaf- 

 fected. To test this phenomenon I myself inhaled amylene alone, and, before 

 inhaling it, made up my mind that I would test for sensibility by pinching 

 my hand. I inhaled, sitting in an arm-chair, 10 grains of amylene from a jar 

 holding 100 cubic inches of air ; the air was thus charged with rather more 

 than 13 per cent, of amylene-vapour ; this quantity is small, except it be 

 inhaled backwards and forwards in the manner I then followed, when the 

 action is quickly decisive. Soon after inhaling I forgot myself altogether, 

 but four minutes from the time I took up the jar I was quite conscious again, 

 waking as if with a start. Ah ! I thought, this experiment will not do ; the 

 amylene acts so quickly that there is no interval during which a man may test 

 his own sensibility ; but turning now to my wrist, I found I was wrong in 

 this suspicion, for there were deep marks of pinches in several places ; and 

 further, the bottle containing the amylene-vapour had been replaced on the 

 table with the stopper firmly adjusted, as I had intended. Thus I had, in 

 fact, been performing acts of consciousness preconceived and carefully carried 

 out without remembering any single fact connected with the process. 



I have seen a phenomenon nearly similar under chloroform, but never so 

 marked as under amylene-. Snow had an experience of the same in kind. 

 During a severe operation on a child under the influence of amylene, the 

 child was playing with a ball, throwing it into the air, catching it with pre- 

 cision, and talking and laughing the while. 



I presume that there is not one hearer present who, quite irrespectively of 

 the special subject of this report, will not, on contemplating the pheno- 

 menon just cited, be struck with the facts adduced. It is clear that the 

 human mind, through its manifestations, may exhibit a mere objective con- 

 sciousness apart from the ordinary subjective consciousness of daily life. It 

 may exhibit a consciousness of which it is itself unconscious, and this under 

 the mere influence of a volatile liquid obtained from common potato-starch, 

 and which mixes so indifferently with blood at 96° Fahr., that one part only 

 will combine with 10,550 parts of blood. 



Have we any analogous phenomena apart from experiment, and spon- 

 taneous or natural like this ? You will all anticipate me when I say yes, 

 there is the very counterpart in somnambulism. The somnambulist is in pre- 

 cisely the same state as the experimentalist under this amyl-compound : he 

 pursues acts of consciousness of which he is not self-conscious ; he presents to 

 us, i. c, mere objective consciousness. Have we not here a key to the hitherto 

 mastery of sleep-walking and acting ? I will not say it is certain, but the 

 evidence is as clear as inferential evidence can ever be, that persons who are 

 subjects of somnambulistic movements do, through some abnormal process of 

 digestion or respiration of the starchy elements of food, produce in their 

 own organisms by their own organic chemistry, an agent which, like amy- 

 lene, destroys remembrance, and perhaps judgment and reason, but which 

 leaves the brain still able to act and to direct the limbs to do things which 

 they could not do better in the most wakeful hour. 



One might linger long on this subject, but I must leave it after noticing 

 yet one other peculiarity of what may be called amylene dreaming. It is 

 this, that during the period of insensibility the mind is capable of carrying on 



