SECTION III.-DREAMS.

I Now invite your attention to that instructive combination of Illusions and Delusions which has, by universal consent, been looked upon as the analogue of Insanity-Dreaming. In the condition of sleep, nature presents us with one of those happy opportunities for study which we so often desire but so rarely obtain, and which, by so large an outlay of thoughtful and ingenious contrivance, we prepare for ourselves in the investigation of Truth by the method of experiment. If no such state as that of sleep existed naturally, we should earnestly desire to bring it about, that we might know how the mind would work when no longer disturbed by the intrusive images of sense, by the thoughts which such images provoke, or by the voluntary acts to which they give rise. In sleep, this work of elimination is done to our hands; and there remain, as the only disturbers of the mind, the sensations of the body itself, and as altogether exceptional occurrences, though most instructive ones, such sounds, sights, and sensations generally, as have force enough to break through the barriers which sleep has raised.

The subject of Dreaming, considered as an analogue of Insanity, was treated, with his usual care and dis

crimination, by Abercrombie, and is also carefully considered by Griesinger. I propose to treat it briefly under two heads or divisions-namely, dreams not traceable to any bodily sensation, and dreams that spring out of bodily sensations.

1. Of the first class of dreams, or those which cannot be traced to any bodily sensation, it is probable that we should be able to discover several varieties by a close observation of what happens to ourselves or others. There would be dreams of the past suggested by a renewal of its conditions (as when a hospital patient of Dr. Duncan, talking in her sleep, makes distinct allusions to the cases of patients who had been inmates of the ward two years before); there would be other cases in which anxiety arising out of a transaction long past, and thorough preoccupation of the waking mind, gives rise to a dream, in which the particulars of the transaction, scarcely noticed at the time, and quite forgotten, are reproduced with strange minuteness and fidelity (as in the case of the banker's clerk who, after the lapse of nine months from the payment to a particular person of the sum of six pounds, dreams of the transaction which he strove in vain to recollect, and has brought before him the impatient, noisy, stammering customer whom he had been requested to serve out of his turn, and to whom he found on examination that he had paid the money), and there would be still other cases differing somewhat from this last, in which memory baffled during the day shows herself, in a sort of masquerade-dress, in the dream of the night (as happened to a young lady, a

zealous botanist, who found a plant which she knew, but could not recall its name; but at night dreamed of being at a party, and being introduced to a Mrs. Hypnumthe plant being a Hypnum).

If our knowledge of the class of dreams which we are now considering were more complete, we should, I think, recognise some other groups; but the largest and most instructive would probably consist of dreams which have for their immediate antecedents some strong emotion, such as anxiety or grief, or some powerful impression, or some train of thought present to the waking mind as a consequence of intense application or prolonged study. Of dreams of this class it is well worth remarking that they are very far indeed from being mere continuations or reproductions of trains of waking thought: indeed they are so different, and even opposite, in character that they might, without any great stretch of imagination, be thought to be to the mind what complementary colours are to the eye. Thus Griesinger, after stating that "agreeable, ravishing, heavenly dreams are very rare in health," but "most frequent in states of deep bodily or mental exhaustion," goes on to say that "to the individual who is distressed by bodily and mental troubles, the dream realizes what reality has refused-happiness and fortune. The starving Trenck, during his imprisonment, often dreamed of rich. repasts; the beggar dreams that he is wealthy, the person who has lost by death some dear friend, fondly dreams of the most intimate and lasting reunion." I may add, as my own recollection of tales of imprisonment and ship

wreck, that the captive is refreshed by dreams of happy freedom, and the sailor, exhausted by watchings and privations, by welcome visions of home, and enchanting views of fairyland. And this strange unreality of dreams is observable also in the most distressing of all cases. It is not uncommon for men and women, at the close of vicious and reprobate lives, to have ravishing dreams of the Paradise which we dare not hope that they have not forfeited.

Medical men, in their attendance on the sick, have many opportunities of observing how dreams are madeof what materials they consist. I have already, in my first section, given a striking illustration of the way in which Illusions are fabricated. Let me add, in this place, also from my own experience, a case showing how some dreams originate. I was attending a patient in a very obstinate attack of colic, in which, for some days, neither medicines nor mechanical appliances were of any avail. But I was nevertheless able to hold out to my patient good hopes of recovery. It was the height of our Railway Mania, and my patient had fallen asleep, under the influence of opium, when he dreamt that I was an engineer to a railway in which he was interested, and that I had assured him that there were no engineering difficulties which might not be readily overcome. This dream of one sleeping patient finds something of a parallel in another, a waking speculative madman, who, when railroads, the Oregon dispute, and the China war were dividing public attention, wanted to establish a company to run a railroad from Oregon to China.

DREAMS SPRINGING FROM SENSATIONS.

61

The second class of Dreams, or that in which the dream springs out of some bodily sensation, has some points of special interest: and it will be found to consist of two sub-classes. In the one, the sensation, whether internal or external, is continuous and often trivial; in the other it is sudden and sharp, and in the nature of a shock.

To the first group belong such sensations as attend a constrained posture, pressure on the neck, chest, or arms; drafts of air; burning feet; itching skin; oppressed stomach, loaded bowels, full bladder to the second group sudden loud noises, such as those produced by the fall of articles of furniture.

The sensations belonging to the first group are sometimes woven into the texture of the dream, as when the desire to evacuate the rectum or bladder conjures up the thought of unsuitable times or places; or when excitement of the genital organs is followed by its appropriate accompaniments. But, in the greater number of cases, the sensation does not take so defined a part in the dream which it originates. The loaded stomach is converted into a hideous personality, from whose heavy pressure there is no escape: a blister applied to the head originates a dream of being scalped by savages: a bottle of hot water to the feet the ascent of the crater of Mount Etna: exposure to cold through the falling-off of the bed-clothes, a dreary winter spent at Hudson's Bay: or, if the dreamer happens to be a member of our own profession, he may find, when he wakes, that colic pains have been the real source