Sleep and Its Derangements

by William A. Hammond

I have on two occasions that I recollect had dreams which were due to odors. On one of them the smell of gas escaping in the room excited the dream of a chemical laboratory; on the other the smell of burning cloth caused me to dream of a laundry, and of one of the women ironing a blanket, which she scorched with a hot iron. A lady informs me that a similar odor produced in her a dream of the house being on fire and the impossibility of her escaping by reason of all her clothes being burned up.

Dreams are very readily excited through impressions made on the special nerves of sensation. Instances are given of persons sleeping with bottles of hot water applied to their feet dreaming of walking on burning lava, or some other hot substance. A patient related to me the particulars of a dream which occurred to him while he was asleep with a vessel of hot water applied to the soles of his feet. He had, just before going to sleep, read in the evening paper an account of the capture of an English gentleman by Italian brigands. He dreamt that while crossing the Rocky Mountains he had been attacked by two Mexicans, who, after a long fight, had succeeded in taking him alive. They conveyed him very hurriedly to their camp, which was situated in a deep gorge. Here they told him that unless he revealed to them the means of making gold from copper they would submit him to torture. In vain he plead ignorance of any such process. Pulling off his boots and stockings they held his naked feet to the fire till he shrieked with agony, and awoke to find that the blanket which was wrapped around the tin vessel containing the hot water had become disarranged, and that his feet were in direct contact with the hot metal.

In another case, that of a lady whose lower limbs were paralyzed, artificial heat was applied during the night to her feet. Frequently her dreams had reference to this circumstance. On one occasion she dreamed that she was transformed into a bear, and was being taught to dance by being made to stand on hot plates of iron. On another, that the house was on fire, and that the floors were so hot as to burn her feet in her efforts to escape. Again, that she was wading through a stream of water which came from a hot spring in the Central Park.

Another patient, a lady, subject to neuralgic attacks of great severity, frequently had the lancinating pains give rise to dreams in which she was stabbed with daggers, cut with knives, torn with pincers, etc.

Not long since I had an attack of erysipelas, in which the disease included the head and face. The pain was not severe, and yet it was sufficient to give rise to the following dream:

I dreamed that I was taking a cold bath, and that while thus engaged a Turk, armed with a pair of long pincers, came into the room and began to pull the hair out of my head. I remonstrated, but was unable to offer any material resistance, for the reason that the water in which I was lying suddenly froze, leaving me imbedded in a solid cake of ice. In order to facilitate his operations, the Turk sponged my head with boiling water, and then, finding the use of the pincers rather slow work, shaved the hair off with a red-hot razor. He then rubbed an ointment on the naked scalp, composed of sulphur, phosphorus, and turpentine, to which he immediately applied fire. Taking me in his arms he rushed down stairs into the street, lighting his way with the flame from my burning head. He had not gone far before he fell down in a fit, and in his struggles gave me a severe blow between the eyes which instantly deprived me of sight.

When I awoke in the morning I had a very distinct recollection of this dream. The incidents were in part due to the fact that I had, two or three days previously, been reading an account of the insanity of Mohammed, and of his being subject to attacks of epilepsy.

The sense of taste is not, for obvious reasons, so productive of dreams as the other senses, but the experiments of M. Maury and myself, to which fuller reference will presently be made, show that strong excitations made upon it are transmitted to the brain; and the following instance, which has recently come under my immediate observation, is an interesting case in point.

A young lady had, in her early childhood, contracted the habit of going to sleep with her thumb in her mouth. She had tried for several years to break herself of the practice, but all her attempts were in vain, for even when by strong mental effort she succeeded in getting to sleep without the usual accompaniment, it was not long before the unruly member was in its accustomed place. Finally she hit upon the plan of covering the offending thumb with extract of aloes just before she went to bed, hoping that if she put it into her mouth she would instantly awake. But she slept on through the night, and in the morning found her thumb in her mouth and all the extract of aloes sucked off. During the night, however, she dreamed that she was crossing the ocean in a steamer made of wormwood, and that the vessel was furnished throughout with the same material. The plates, the dishes, tumblers, chairs, tables, etc. were all of wormwood, and the emanations so pervaded all parts of the ship that it was impossible to breathe without tasting the bitterness. Everything that she ate or drank was likewise, from being in contact with wormwood, so impregnated with the flavor that the taste was overpowering. When she arrived at Havre she asked for a glass of water for the purpose of washing the taste from her mouth, but they brought her an infusion of wormwood, which she gulped down because she was thirsty, though the sight of it excited nausea. She went to Paris and consulted a famous physician, M. Sauve Moi, begging him to do something which would extract the wormwood from her body. He told her there was but one remedy, and that was ox gall. This he gave her by the pound, and in a few weeks the wormwood was all gone, but the ox gall had taken its place, and was fully as bitter and disagreeable. To get rid of the ox gall she was advised to take counsel of the Pope. She accordingly went to Rome, and obtained an audience of the Holy Father. He told her that she must make a pilgrimage to the plain where the pillar of salt stood, into which Lot’s wife was transformed, and must eat a piece of the salt as big as her thumb. During her journey in search of the pillar of salt she endured a great many sufferings, but finally triumphed over all obstacles, and reached the object of her journey. What part to take was now the question. After a good deal of deliberation she reasoned that as she had a bad habit of sucking her thumb, it would be very philosophical to break off this part from the statue, and thus not only get cured of the bitterness in her mouth, but also of her failing. She did so, put the piece of salt into her mouth, and awoke to find that she was sucking her own thumb.

It might be supposed that the brain during sleep is not excitable through the sense of sight. Many examples, however, are on record of dreams being thus produced, and several very interesting cases have come under my own observation. Among them are the following: