Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. I

by Erasmus Darwin

These paroxysms were terminated with the appearance of inexpressible surprise, and great fear, from which she was some minutes in recovering herself, calling on her sister with great agitation, and very frequently underwent a repetition of convulsions, apparently from the pain of fear. See Sect. [XVII. 3. 7].

After having thus returned for about an hour every day for two or three weeks, the reveries seemed to become less complete, and some of their circumstances varied; so that she could walk about the room in them without running against any of the furniture; though these motions were at first very unsteady and tottering. And afterwards she once drank a dish of tea, when the whole apparatus of the tea-table was set before her; and expressed some suspicion, that a medicine was put into it, and once seemed to smell of a tuberose, which was in flower in her chamber, and deliberated aloud about breaking it from the stem, saying, "it would make her sister so charmingly angry." At another time in her melancholy moments she heard the sound of a passing bell, "I wish I was dead," she cried, listening to the bell, and then taking off one of her shoes, as she sat upon the bed, "I love the colour black," says she, "a little wider, and a little longer, even this might make me a coffin!"—Yet it is evident, she was not sensible at this time, any more than formerly, of seeing or hearing any person about her; indeed when great light was thrown upon her by opening the shutters of the window, her trains of ideas seemed less melancholy; and when I have forcibly held her hands, or covered her eyes, she appeared to grow impatient, and would say, she could not tell what to do, for she could neither see nor move. In all these circumstances her pulse continued unaffected as in health. And when the paroxysm was over, she could never recollect a single idea of what had passed in it.

This astonishing disease, after the use of many other medicines and applications in vain, was cured by very large doses of opium given about an hour before the expected returns of the paroxysms; and after a few relapses, at the intervals of three or four months, entirely disappeared. But she continued at times to have other symptoms of epilepsy.

[3]. We shall only here consider, what happened during the time of her reveries, as that is our present subject; the fits of convulsion belong to another part of this treatise. Sect. [XXXIV. 1. 4].

There seems to have been no suspension of volition during the fits of reverie, because she endeavoured to regain the lost idea in repeating the lines of poetry, and deliberated about breaking the tuberose, and suspected the tea to have been medicated.

[4]. The ideas and muscular movements depending on sensation were exerted with their usual vivacity, and were kept from being inconsistent by the power of volition, as appeared from her whole conversation, and was explained in Sect. [XVII. 3. 7]. and [XVIII. 16].

[5]. The ideas and motions dependant on irritation during the first weeks of her disease, whilst the reverie was complete, were never succeeded by the sensation of pleasure or pain; as she neither saw, heard, nor felt any of the surrounding objects. Nor was it certain that any irritative motions succeeded the stimulus of external objects, till the reverie became less complete, and then she could walk about the room without running against the furniture of it. Afterwards, when the reverie became still less complete from the use of opium, some few irritations were at times succeeded by her attention to them. As when she smelt at a tuberose, and drank a dish of tea, but this only when she seemed voluntarily to attend to them.

[6]. In common life when we listen to distant sounds, or wish to distinguish objects in the night, we are obliged strongly to exert our volition to dispose the organs of sense to perceive them, and to suppress the other trains of ideas, which might interrupt these feeble sensations. Hence in the present history the strongest stimuli were not perceived, except when the faculty of volition was exerted on the organ of sense; and then even common stimuli were sometimes perceived: for her mind was so strenuously employed in pursuing its own trains of voluntary or sensitive ideas, that no common stimuli could so far excite her attention as to disunite them; that is, the quantity of volition or of sensation already existing was greater than any, which could be produced in consequence of common degrees of stimulation. But the few stimuli of the tuberose, and of the tea, which she did perceive, were such, as accidentally coincided with the trains of thought, which were passing in her mind; and hence did not disunite those trains, and create surprise. And their being perceived at all was owing to the power of volition preceding or coinciding with that of irritation.

This explication is countenanced by a fact mentioned concerning a somnambulist in the Lausanne Transactions, who sometimes opened his eyes for a short time to examine, where he was, or where his ink-pot stood, and then shut them again, dipping his pen into the pot every now and then, and writing on, but never opening his eyes afterwards, although he wrote on from line to line regularly, and corrected some errors of the pen, or in spelling: so much easier was it to him to refer to his ideas of the positions of things, than to his perceptions of them.

[7]. The associated motions persisted in their usual channel, as appeared by the combinations of her ideas, and the use of her muscles, and the equality of her pulse; for the natural motions of the arterial system, though originally excited like other motions by stimulus, seem in part to continue by their association with each other. As the heart of a viper pulsates long after it is cut out of the body, and removed from the stimulus of the blood.