In reference to this subject, Dr. Forbes Winslow[38] relates the following interesting case:
“A feeble, sensitive lady, suffering from a uterine affection, writes to us as follows concerning the influence of three or four sixteenth-of-a-grain doses of hydrochlorate of morphia: ‘After taking a few doses of morphia, I felt a sensation of extreme quiet and wish for repose, and on closing my eyes, visions, if I may so call them, were constantly before me, and as constantly changing in their aspect: scenes from foreign lands; lovely landscapes, with tall, magnificent trees covered with drooping foliage, which was blown gently against me as I walked along. Then in an instant I was in a besieged city filled with armed men. I was carrying an infant, which was snatched from me by a soldier and killed upon the spot. A Turk was standing by with a scimitar in his hand, which I seized, and attacking the man who had killed the child, I fought most furiously with him and killed him. Then I was surrounded, made prisoner, carried before a judge and accused of the deed; but I pleaded my own cause with such a burst of eloquence (which, by-the-by, I am quite incapable of in my right mind) that judge, jury, and hearers acquitted me at once. Again, I was in an Eastern city visiting an Oriental lady, who entertained me most charmingly. We sat together on rich ottomans, and were regaled with supper and confectionery. Then came soft sounds of music at a distance, while fountains were playing and birds singing, and dancing girls danced before us, every movement being accompanied with the tinkling of silver bells attached to their feet. But all this suddenly changed, and I was entertaining the Oriental lady in my own house, and in order to please her delicate taste, I had everything prepared as nearly as possible after the fashion with which she had so enchanted me. She, however, to my no small surprise, asked for wine, and took not one, two, or three glasses, but drank freely, until at last I became terrified that she would have to be carried away intoxicated. While considering what course I had better adopt, several English officers came in, and she at once asked them to drink with her, which so shocked my sense of propriety that the scene changed and I was in darkness.
“‘Then I felt that I was formed of granite, and immovable. Suddenly a change came again over me, and I found that I consisted of delicate and fragile basket-work. Then I became a danseuse, delighting an audience and myself by movements which seemed barely to touch the earth. Presently beautiful sights came before me, treasures from the depth of the sea, gems of the brightest hues, gorgeous shells, coral of the richest colors, sparkling with drops of water, and hung with lovely seaweed. My eager glances could not take in half the beautiful objects that passed before me during the incessant changes the visions underwent. Now I was gazing upon antique brooches and rings from buried cities; now upon a series of Egyptian vases; now upon sculptured wood-work blackened by time; and lastly I was buried amid forests of tall trees, such as I had read of but never seen.
“‘The sights that pleased me most I had power to a certain extent to prolong, and those that displeased me I could occasionally set aside, and I awoke myself to full consciousness once or twice while under the influence of the morphia by an angry exclamation that I would not have it. I did not once lose my personal identity.’
“The lady almost invariably suffers more or less from hallucinations of the foregoing character, if it becomes necessary to administer to her an opiate: and on analyzing her visions, she can generally refer the principal portions of them, notwithstanding their confusion and distortion, to works that she has recently read.”
Opium, in certain doses, increases the amount of blood in the brain, and this induces a condition very different from that of sleep. In this fact we have an explanation of the activity of the imagination as one of its prominent effects. That Coleridge should have composed the Kubla Khan under its influence is in nowise remarkable. It is probable, however, that the full influence of his mind was exerted upon it after he awoke to consciousness, and that the wild fancies excited by the opiate, and based upon what he had been previously reading, formed the substratum of his conceptions. In any event, the ideas contained in this fragment are no more fanciful than those which occurred to De Quincey and the lady whose case has just been recorded, nor are they more impressively related.
The imagination may therefore be active during sleep, but we have no authentic instance on record that it has, unaided by causes which exercise a powerful influence over the intracranial circulation, led to the production of any ideas which could not be excelled by the individual when awake. Perhaps the most striking case in opposition to this opinion is one detailed by Abercrombie,[39] who says:
“The following anecdote has been preserved in a family of rank in Scotland, the descendants of a distinguished lawyer of the last age. This eminent person had been consulted respecting a case of great importance and much difficulty, and he had been studying it with intense anxiety and attention. After several days had been occupied in this manner, he was observed by his wife to rise from his bed in the night and go to a writing-desk which stood in the bed-room. He then sat down and wrote a long letter, which he put carefully by in the desk and returned to bed. The following morning he told his wife that he had had a most interesting dream; that he had dreamt of delivering a clear and luminous opinion respecting a case which had exceedingly perplexed him, and that he would give anything to recover the train of thought which had passed before him in his dream. She then directed him to the writing-desk, where he found the opinion clearly and fully written out, and which was afterwards found to be perfectly correct.”
It is probable that this gentleman was actually awake when he arose from the bed and wrote the paper referred to, and that in the morning he mistook the circumstance for a dream. It is not at all uncommon for such errors to be committed, especially under the condition of mental anxiety and fatigue. A gentleman informed me only a short time since that going to bed after a very exciting day he thought the next morning that he had dreamed of a fire occurring in the vicinity of his house. To his surprise his wife informed him that the supposed dream was a reality, and that he had got up to the window, looked at the fire, conversed with her concerning it, and that he was at the time fully awake.
Brierre de Boismont[40] relates the following instance, which is to the same effect: