“A dream that keeps on coming up in my mind is one that brings back a motor accident I had about six years ago, which gave me a severe nervous shock. I had, of course, entirely forgotten about it, except when in a motor, when I always thought of it.
“Of the fifth day I have absolutely no recollections.”
This is the one instance in which a man has dreamt the experience of hunger and thirst in addition to battle experience.
Olfactory dreams: Hysterical vomiting.
Case 345. (Wiltshire, June, 1916.)
A lieutenant in the infantry (mother, of a nervous disposition) had been at the front for 3½ months when he started vomiting everything he ate.
He was transferred a fortnight later to a base hospital as “gastritis.” Physical examination proved negative, but the man complained of his nerves. He slept badly owing to trench-life dreams, from which he would wake in a sweat. He was quite unwilling to refer to these dreams.
In point of fact he had had to supervise the burial of many decomposing bodies, after which he had been haunted “by that awful smell of the dead.” Then developed states of abstraction, in which he went over and over the burying experience. He cried by himself.
It seems that the vomiting was secondary to hysterical hallucinations.