Part 47

A boy, the servant of a medical friend (Mr. A——), was, some years ago, placed under my care for fever, with delirium. About the acme of his disorder the impetuosity of the blood in the vessels of the head was such as to project his ears prominently forwards, like those of a satyr, or, as the gossips thought, rather of a demon. Yet all this subsided as the fever waned.

Yet, believe me, I draw a decided distinction between mania and dreaming; though the phenomena may sometimes bear resemblance. In one essential point they differ; that the transient illusion is not manifested, except during slumber, or a state closely analogous to it, when the senses are languid, or asleep. It is true, however, the maniac will, on his recovery, often dream of the subject of his insanity, yet insanity is more exemplified by action, the dream being usually passive.

The predisposition to insanity is often, too, hereditary, so that the slightest moral influence, imperceptible perhaps to the physician, may incite such a mind to madness; for where there is no predisposition, that is, a perfect integrity of brain, a right judgment is evinced even under the potent influence of the passions.

As the condition of insanity, so the illusive vision, does not always primarily depend on medullary disease; there are primary moral as well as physical causes. But even the exertion of thought, which the ultra spiritualist may term an immaterial faculty, is attended by increased action on the matter of the brain. The organ of mind will, if diseased, (though not always,) produce deranged actions. Yet it is equally true, if even a sound brain be badly instructed, and its passion uncontrolled, insanity may ensue; not however without quickly, I believe immediately, inducing structural change.

On one point, the dream and insanity are often alike; they are mental fulfilments of a wish: and the dreamer, during his slumber, and the madman throughout his derangement, are presented with the spectra of their desires, and their hopes and fears become, for these periods, reality.

It was with a reference to the wanderings of the understanding in dreams, that Sir James Mackintosh thus writes in a letter to Robert Hall:

“These will familiarise your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep and dreams, and, in process of time, they will cease to appear to you much more horrible.”

ASTR. And pray, Evelyn, how doth all this profound prosing affect the subject of dreams?

EV. By similitude. I may even remind you with devout veneration, of the dreams of a prophet, to prove the brain highly sensitive when these visions are before it. Listen to the words of Daniel, to whom “God gave knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.”

“I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit, in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.”

“And I, Daniel, fainted and was sick certain days.”

Even here, may we not believe, that the Creator did not alter his law?

It was Dr. Cullen who first drew a parallel between insanity and dreams. As some proof of his insight, we read in Lode of a man who never dreamed until he fell into a fever in the twenty-fifth year;—in Beattie, of a young friend who never dreamt unless his health was deranged.

And Mr. Locke thus writes: “I once knew a man who was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me that he had never dreamed in his life until he had fever.”

This immunity from dreams is also most marked in savages, unless during disorder or at the dying moment. Ulloa, Humboldt, and La Condamine, all agree as to the character of indolence and absence of thought and fancy in the native Americans, and it is as sure that they seldom dream.

Now whatever influence tends to arrest or derange the upper circulation of the blood in its return to the heart, or to detain it in the vessels of the brain, or which presses on an important nerve, so as to disturb the function of the brain or spinal cord, by continuous sympathy, may be the remote cause of the phenomena of dreaming.

Such are the results of repletion, dyspepsia, the supine position, &c. &c.

And here, Astrophel, I meet your metaphysician.

Galen, and indeed the ancients generally, attributed dreams chiefly to indigestion; but referred their immediate excitement to fumes and vapours, instead of to nervous influence, or cerebral congestion from interrupted circulation.

CAST. And here, Evelyn, courtesy might have prompted you to meet my poets. Let me see, is it not Dryden who writes of—

“——rising fumes of undigested food, And noxious humours that disturb the blood?”

And in a poem believed to have been written by Chaucer, there is this passage: can I remember his quaintness?

“I supposed yt to have been some noxiall fantasy, As fallyth in dremes, in parties of the nyght, Which cometh of joy or grievous malady; Or of robuste metes which causeth grete myght; Overmoche replet obscuryth the syght Of natural reasonne, and causyth idyll thowght, Makyth the body hevy where hyt was lyght.”

And again, in the tale of the “Nonnes Preest:”

“Swevenes (dreams) engendren of repletions, And oft of fume and of complexions, When humours ben to habundant in a wight. Of other humours cou’d I telle also, That werken many a man in slepe moch wo,” &c.

EV. I sit reproved, fair lady. Herodotus also says, the Atlantes never dream; which Montaigne refers to their never eating anything which has died of itself. And Burton thus sums up his precepts of prevention:

“Against fearful and troublesome dreams, incubus, and inconveniences wherewith melancholy men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper and of such meats as are easie of digestion, no hare, venison, beef, &c.; not to lie on his back,” &c.

Dryden, to ensure his brilliant visions of poesy, ate raw flesh; and Mrs. Radcliffe, I am told, adopted the same plan. We know that green tea and coffee, if we do sleep, induce dreaming; and Baptista Porta, for procuring quiet rest and pleasing dreams, swallowed horse-tongue after supper.