Part 46

And, lastly, Crabbe, in his “World of Dreams:”

“That female fiend, why is she there? Alas! I know her. Oh, begone! Why is that tainted bosom bare? Why fixed on me that eye of stone? Why have they left us thus alone? I saw the deed——”

ASTR. You will drown us in a flood of Helicon, fair lady, if you thus dole out the thoughts of these maudlin poets. The records of national and domestic history, the dreams of the conqueror of thousands, and of the midnight assassin, are replete with incidents, if we will search for them, more impressive, ay, and more romantic, than all this rhyming; and from the legends of history alone I could select a legion of dreaming mysteries, which would dissolve all these fine-spun theories of Evelyn, regarding the essence, as he terms it, of the dream. He must adopt a clearer course, in showing us his causes, than by harping on this favourite theme of memory; and we must listen through another moonlight, ere we be made wiser, by the unfolding of this grand secret of visions.

INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN.

“I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain.” ROMEO AND JULIET.

EV. That I may explain to you the predisposition of a dream,—in other words, the state of broken slumber,—it is essential that I recur to the physiology of the brain; and I must humble our pride, by combining some of the debasing conditions of our nature, as influential on the divine mind, through the medium of its chambers of marrow; for to the intimate condition and function of the brain and its nerves, and its contained blood, we must chiefly look for elucidation of the physical causes of a dream.

Yet I may even grant you, for an argument, Astrophel, the flight of an immortal spirit, and all the amiable vagaries of Sir Thomas Brown; reserving to myself to prove at what moment we become conscious of this flight.

In natural actions, there are ever three requisites, like the points of a syllogism:

1. A susceptibility of influence; 2. The influence itself; 3. The effect of this influence:

And these I call the predisposing, the exciting, and the proximate causes.

1. The brain is brought to this susceptibility by excited temperament, study, intense and undivided thought; in short, by any intense impression.

2. The influence or excitement is applied; congestion of blood producing impression on extremities, or origin of a nerve, at the period of departing or returning consciousness. At these periods, the blood changes, and I believe, as it changes, the phenomena of mind, as in the waking state, obey these changes:—rational and light dreams being the effect of circulation of scarlet blood; dull and reasonless visions and “night-mare,” that of crimson, or black blood.

3. The effect of this influence is recurrence of idea, memory,—more or less erroneously associated, as the blood approximates to the black or scarlet state, or as the brain itself is constituted.

Now it is essential to the perfect function of the brain, not only that it shall have a due supply of blood, but that this blood shall be of that quality we term oxygenated. If there be a simple deficiency of this scarlet blood, a state of sound undisturbed sleep will ensue (slightly analogous to the condition of syncope, or fainting). This may be the consequence of any indirect impression, or the natural indication of that direct debility, which we witness in early infancy, and in the “second childishness and mere oblivion” of old age. But this deficiency of arterial blood may be depending on a more positive cause, venous congestion, impeding its flow; for in sleep, the breathing being slower, the blood becomes essentially darker. Even arterial blood itself will become to a certain degree carbonized, by lentor, or stagnation. Venous congestion and diminution of arterial circulation are not incompatible; indeed, Dr. Abercrombie reasons very ably on their relative nature, implying the necessity of some remora of venous circulation to supply that want or vacuum which the brain would otherwise experience from the deficiency of the current in the arterial system. Thus will the languid arterial circulation of the brain, which causes sleep in the first instance, produce, secondarily, that congestion of blood in the veins and sinuses, which shall reduce it to disturbed slumber, and excite the dream. May we not account, on this principle, for the difficulty which many persons experience in falling into a second slumber, when they have been disturbed in the first?

IDA. Combe, I believe, observed, through a hole in a fractured skull, that the brain was elevated during an apparent dream.

EV. This is a matter of frequent observation with us. There was, in 1821, at Montpelier, a woman who had lost part of the skull, and the brain and its membranes lay bare. When she was in deep sleep, the brain lay in the skull almost motionless; when she was dreaming, it became elevated; and when her dreams (proved by her relating them when awake) were on vivid or animating subjects, but especially when she was awake, the brain was protruded through the cranial aperture.

Blumenbach states that he, himself, witnessed in one person a sinking of the brain, whenever he was asleep, and a swelling with blood when he awoke. David Hartley, therefore, may be half right and half wrong when he imputes dreams to an impediment to the flow of blood, a collapse of the ventricles, and a diminished quantity of their contained serum.

We thus have not only a deficiency of proper stimulus, but a deleterious condition of the blood, which acts as a poison to the brain. In fatal cases of coma and delirium, we observe deep red points, chiefly in the cineritious part of the brain, from this congestion of its vessels. Sound sleep is thus prevented, but the congestion of carbonized blood acting as a sort of narcotic, depresses the energy of the brain so far as to prevent waking, inducing that middle state, drowsiness or slumber; so that sleep may thus depend on congestion from exhaustion; and “spectral illusion” from congestion in that state short of slumber; and insanity itself from congestion still more copious and permanent.

From this results a disturbed condition of the brain; it is irritated, not excited, by its healthy or proper stimulus; and it follows that such derangement of the manifestations of mind ensues as we term a dream. Waking, however, soon takes place, and the blood is more scarlet, and the faculties themselves gradually awake. As this is more perfect, we remember the dream, and are enabled to explain it, and know that it was a dream. The mind is now restored, so that scarlet blood indicates healthy thought, and black blood its reverse. Your pardon for this prolixity and dulness. The healthy or unhealthy crisis of the blood is a most important subject in our argument, and too constantly slighted in the question of illusion.

Monsieur Denis records the story of a young man of Paris, in the 17th century, who was cured of a stubborn and protracted lethargy, by the transfusion of the arterial blood of a lamb; and another of a recovery from madness, by that of the arterial blood of a calf, and these in presence of men both of science and high quality.

I do not affirm my implicit faith in this statement, of the effect of gentle blood, but I am certain of the poisonous influence of that of another quality; and I will cite a passage from Hoffman, the German poet, whom Monsieur Poupon, in his “Illustrations of Phrenology,” adduces as a specimen of marvellousness, ere I offer my cases.

“Why do my thoughts, whether I am awake or asleep, always tend, in spite of all my efforts, to the gloomy subject of insanity? It seems to me as if I felt my disordered ideas escaping from my mind, like hot blood from a wounded vein.”

This was figurative, but it was true; for of itself this black blood may be suddenly the cause of furious and fatal mania. When Dionis, in his “Cours d’Opérations de Chirurgie,” is referring to that operation that has lately, by its revival, occupied so much of the attention of the medical world (the process of transfusion) he says: “La fin funeste de ces malheureuses victimes de la nouveauté, detruisit, en un jour, les hautes idées qu’ils avoient conçues; ils devinrent foux, furieux, et moururent ensuite.”

The relief of the brain, by the escape of this blood, is of deeper interest to science than the mere romancer may imagine.

Sir Samuel Romilly was for a moment, I believe, in a state of sanity, when blood had flowed from the divided vessels of his throat; for he attempted, it appeared, to stop its flow by thrusting the towel with some force into the wound.

So diseases of the heart, by keeping the black blood in the brain, predispose to dreaming. During the age of terror in France, organic diseases of the heart and cases of mania were most prevalent.

I may for a moment indulge in analogies regarding this arrest of the blood. Cases of inflammation of the ear are often seen in confirmed maniacs (the helix being usually the part most inflamed), and black blood often oozes from the part.

M. Calmeil considers chronic phlegmasia of the brain as the cause of insanity, the derangement itself being, as it were, the moral result or disease, and the organic changes or proximate cause the physical disease; both being but the sequelæ, or consequence of inflammation.