commend a prescription which his judgment approved*. Diodorus Siculus relates, that a certain Scythian dreamt that Esculapius had drawn the humours of his body to one place, or head, and was afterwards constrained to lance a festered imposthume. Esculapius was, indeed, supposed to assist the sick in their dreams †, and dreams which predicted, or pointed out the means of recovery, were thought to be not unfrequent. When Galen had an inflammation about the diaphragma, he was admonished in his sleep,we are told, to open the vein most apparent between the thumb and the four finger, and to take a quantity of blood from thence. He did so, and was restored to health. His reflections *Plutarch. in Pericles. + Galen. de Sanit. tuend. L. i. C. 8. Schott. Phys. Curios. L. iii. C. 25. P. 501. Col. Rhod. Ant. Lect. L. xxvii. C. 49. P. 1250. might have suggested "without a ghost" that bleeding would be of service in an inflammation, as they might also have taught him when consulted in the case of a swelled tongue, to direct a purge and cooling application, which probably had more effect than a gargle of lettuce juice which the megrim of his patient prompted him to have recourse to, in consequence of a dream at the same time, and from which he conceived that he derived great benefit*. The emperor Marcus Antoninus says that he learned remedies for spitting of blood, and for dizziness, in his dreams +. Dreams similar to those above mentioned, are said to have happened in modern times, as Sir Christopher Wren, when at Paris in 1671, being disordered by a fever and retention of urine, and a pain in the reins, is reported to have sent for a physician, who advised him to let blood, thinking he had * Meth. de Tuend. L. xiv. C. &. See also L. vii. in Precep. * Τα εις αυτα, a pleurisy, but bleeding being very disagreeable to him, he was determined to defer it a day longer; and is said to have dreamed that night that he was in a place where palm trees grew, and that a woman in a romantic habit reached dates to him; the next day he sent for dates which cured him of the pain in his reins; and many other tales of this description are related. A Roman widow, we are told by Fulgosius, dreamed that as she walked in a garden at Rome, a root of the wild rose addressed her, and directed her to write to her son who was then on some military expedition in Spain, to instruct him that persons labouring under madness might be cured by that root. The widow, it is added, following the instruction of the dream, wrote a letter which opportunely reaching her son after he had been bit by a mad dog, preserved him just as the symptoms of the hydrophobia were beginning to appear *. * The word used is Cynorrhodon, which signifies also the sweet briar, and the flower of the red lilly.-Plin. 25, 2, and 21, 5. Cornelius Rufus, who was consul with Mannius Curius, is said to have dreamed, that he had lost his sight, and awoke blind and another person, we are told, dreamed that he was bitten on the foot, and next day had a cancer. These, perhaps, were the forebodings of fear excited by pain, but what shall we say to the story of Marcus, the freedman, of the younger Pliny, who dreamed that some one sitting on his bed shaved him, and awoke well trimmed: we must agree with Fulgosius, that this was a miracle. ON ANCIENT CHAPTER VI. DREAMS, CONNECTED WITH IMPENDING DEATH. The gates of Death are open night and day. THE dreams which have chiefly seized the imagination, and affected the credulity of mankind, have been those which appear to have been connected with impending calamities and death, and which, from the importance of their intention, have been thought to justify the supposition of preternatural inspiration, or of the enlargement of the divine powers of the mind, on its approach to the scenes of eternity and spiritual existence. A belief in the reality of such intimations has very commonly obtained; but upon an ac |