76 



SLEEP AND DUMAMS. 



liko ijliis: you imagino yourself to be eitliev vviiJkino- or run- 

 ning, and take longer and longer steps ; presently you find, 

 to your groat joy, that you can, by a slight effort, keep olT 

 the ground for a long time, and finally that you can float 

 along without touching it at all, and swim through the air in 

 an upright or flying attitude. It sometimes takes the form 

 of jumping, or luthor floating, down flights of stairs, rarely 

 getting to tlio bottom. These phonorruina a,re probably allied 

 to giddiness, and may be duo to a too languid or disturbed 

 circulation in the brain. Whether the dream is pleasant oi' 

 not, seems to depend very much on tlie bodily eoiulition. 

 Aborcrombie narrates the case of an. old geniJiMnan lu; knew, 

 who, forty years before, had been pui'suod by an infui-iiittid 

 bull ; since that time, if ho indulged in too heavy a supper, 

 he almost always dreamt that this hoast wiis after liim. 

 The usual foi/ms of nightmare can be caused in some people 

 with great certainty, by eating certain kinds of food at night 

 and lying on their backs. They ar'o most likely due to 

 sympathetic disturbance op the liea,i't iuid circulation, iuul 

 actually accompanied by piiin or' disconirort; but why thciy 

 sliould assume tlio shape they do, of intense desire to escape 

 fi'om some liorrible danger, with complete inability to do so, 

 I cannot say. The nervous impulses which we are anxious 

 to send to our muscles, seem incapable of going down their 

 channels, probably because the nerve fibres lose their irrita- 

 bility, and do not I'cspond. In some very vivid dreams this 

 is overcome, and the alarmed sleeper jumps out of bed. 

 There is a case described of an officer who could be induced 

 to dr(;am by whispering in his (iar, and was often made to 

 imitate the actions of swimming, and even of firing a pistol, 

 by being told to do so. This is remarkable, as being on the 

 border-land of mesmerism. It is noticeable that in this case 

 he never had a,ny memory of tlicsci violent dreams when ho 



