Sleep and Its Derangements

by William A. Hammond

During sleep the mind is, as he supposes, in a particular state, for, as has been shown in the previous chapter, it has lost many of its chief parts. The laws which govern it are, however, the same which always regulate it. The body upon which their power is primarily exercised—the brain—is not in the same condition during sleep as during wakefulness, and hence the differences in the evidences of cerebral activity.

Sir William Hamilton[71] is generally considered to have determined affirmatively the question of the continuance of the action of the brain during sleep. He caused himself to be aroused from sleep at intervals through the night, and invariably found that he was disturbed from a dream, the particulars of which he could always distinctly recollect. But a full knowledge of the subject he was investigating would have sufficed to convince Sir William that the conclusion he drew from his experiments was altogether fallacious. It is well known that dreams are excited by strong impressions made upon the senses, or by irritations arising in the internal organs. Thus Baron Trenck relates that when confined in his dungeon he suffered the pangs of hunger almost continually, and that his dreams at night were always of delicate meats and sumptuous repasts, spread before him on luxuriously-furnished tables. The mere excitation of waking a sleeping person is generally sufficient to give rise to a dream. Maury, in his very interesting work, to which reference has already been made, and which will hereafter be more specifically considered, adduces many examples of dreams produced by sensorial impressions. I have myself performed many experiments with reference to this point, and have generally found ample confirmation of Maury’s investigations. It may therefore, I think, be assumed, without any violence to the actual facts of the cases, that the brain is not always in action, and that there are times when we sleep without dreaming.

In the previous chapter the idea is sought to be conveyed that we originate nothing in our dreams. We may conceive of things which never existed, or of which we have heard or read, but the images we make of them are either composed of elements familiar to us, or else are based upon ideal representations which we have formed in our waking moments. Thus, before the discovery of America no Europeans ever dreamed of American Indians, for the reason that nothing existed within their knowledge which could give any idea of the appearance of such human beings. It is possible that Columbus and his companions may have dreamed of the continent of which they were in search and of its natives, but the images formed of the latter must necessarily have resembled other beings they had seen, or which they had heard described. After the discovery, however, it was no unusual thing for the Spaniards and others to have correct images of Indians appear to them in their dreams.

Dreams, therefore, must have a foundation, and this is either impressions made upon the mind at some previous period, or produced during sleep by bodily sensations. These impressions, however they may be formed, are subjected to the unrestrained influence of the imagination.

At first sight it may seem that we often have dreams not excited by actual sensations, and which have no relation to any events of our lives, or any ideas which have passed through our minds, but thorough investigation will invariably reveal the existence of an association between the dream and some such ideas or events. For instance, a few nights ago I dreamed that a gentleman, a friend of mine, had invented what he called a “dog-cart ambulance,” a vehicle which he declared was the best ever made for the transportation of sick or wounded men. On awaking, all the particulars were fresh in my mind, but I could not for some time perceive why I had had such a dream. At last I recollected that the morning before a gentleman had given me a very full description of Prospect Park, in Brooklyn. The friend of whom I dreamed has charge of the construction of this Park. His presence was, therefore, fully explained, and as dog-carts are driven in parks, this link was also accounted for. The ambulance part was due to the fact that I had that same morning found the card of a gentleman upon my table who really had invented an ambulance. The imagination had, therefore, taken these data supplied by the memory, and had combined them into the incongruous web constituting my dream.

Dreams are also frequently built upon circumstances which have transpired many years previously, and which have long since apparently passed from our recollection. A very striking instance of this kind is related by Abercrombie,[72] on the authority of Sir Walter Scott.

“Mr. R. J. Rowland, a gentleman of landed property in the vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the accumulated arrears of teind (tithe), for which he was said to be indebted to a noble family the titulars (lay impropriators of the tithe). Mr. R. was strongly impressed with the belief that his father had, by a form of process peculiar to the law of Scotland, purchased these teinds from the titular, and, therefore, that the present prosecution was groundless. But after an industrious search among his father’s papers, an investigation of the public records, and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted law business for his father, no evidence could be discovered to support his defense. The period was now near at hand when he conceived the loss of his lawsuit to be inevitable, and he had formed his determination to ride to Edinburgh next day, and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and, with all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purpose. His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr. R. thought that he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him, because he had a stray consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to recover any evidence in support of his belief. ‘You are right, my son,’ replied the paternal shade; ‘I did acquire right to these teinds, for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the hands of Mr. ——, a writer (or attorney), who is now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that occasion for a particular reason, but who never, on any other occasion, transacted business on my account. It is very possible,’ pursued the vision, ‘that Mr. —— may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date; but you may call it to his recollection by this token—that when I came to pay his account there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.’

“Mr. R. awaked in the morning with all the events of the vision impressed on his mind, and thought it worth while to ride across the country to Inveresk, instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he came there he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream, a very old man; without saying anything of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but, on mention of the Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory; he made an immediate search for the papers and recovered them, so that Mr. R. carried to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing.”

A friend has related to me some circumstances in his own case similar to the above, and illustrating the same points. In the course of his practice as a lawyer, it became necessary for him to ascertain the exact age of a client, who was also his cousin. Their grandfather had been a rather eccentric personage, who had taken a great deal of notice of both his grandsons—his only direct descendants. He died when they were boys. My friend often told his cousin that if his grandfather were alive there would be no difficulty at getting at the desired information, and that he had a dim recollection of having seen a record kept by the old gentleman, and of there being some peculiarity about it which he could not recall. Several months elapsed, and he had given up the idea of attempting to discover the facts of which he had been in search, when, one night, he dreamed that his grandfather came to him and said: “You have been trying to find out when J—— was born; don’t you recollect that one afternoon when we were fishing I read you some lines from an Elzevir Horace, and showed you how I had made a family record out of the work by inserting a number of blank leaves at the end? Now, as you know, I devised my library to the Rev. —— ——. I was a d——d fool for giving him books which he will never read! Get the Horace, and you will discover the exact hour at which J—— was born.” In the morning all the particulars of this dream were fresh in my friend’s memory. The reverend gentleman lived in a neighboring city; my friend took the first train, found the copy of Horace, and at the end the pages constituting the family record, exactly as had been described to him in the dream. By no effort of his memory, however, could he recollect the incidents of the fishing excursion.

Dr. Macnish,[73] in stating his opinion that dreams are uniformly the resuscitation or re-embodiment of thoughts which have formerly, in some shape or other, occupied the mind, relates the following example from his own experience: