M. Calmeil considers chronic phlegmasia of the brain

as the cause of insanity, the derangement itself being,
286 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD
as it were, the moral result or disease, and the or- ganic changes or proximate cause the physical disease ; both being but the sequela, or consequence of inflam- mation.
A boy, the servant of a medical friend (Mr. A— ),
was, some years ago, placed under my care for fever, with delirium. About the acme of his disorder the im- petuosity of the blood in the vessels of the head was such as to project his ears prominently forwards, like those of a satyr, or, as the gossips thought, rather of a demon. Yet all this subsided as the fever waned.
Yet, believe me, I draw a decided distinction between mania and dreaming ; though the phenomena may some- times bear resemblance. In one essential point they differ ; that the transient illusion is not manifested, ex- cept during slumber, or a state closely analogous to it, when the senses are languid, or asleep. It is true, however, the maniac will, on his recovery, often dream of the subject of his insanity, yet insanity is more exem- plified by action, the dream being usually passive.
The predisposition to insanity is often, too, hereditary, so that the slightest moral influence, imperceptible per- haps to the physician, may incite such a mind to mad- ness ; for where there is no predisposition, that is, a perfect integrity of brain, a right judgment is evinced even under the potent influence of the passions.
As the condition of insanity, so the illusive vision, does not always primarily depend on medullary disease ; there are primary moral as well as physical causes. But even the exertion of thought, which the ultra spiritualist may term an immaterial faculty, is attended by in- creased action on the matter of the brain. The organ of mind will, if diseased, (though not always,) produce deranged actions. Yet it is equally true, if even a sound brain be badly instructed, and its passion un- controlled, insanity may ensue; not however without
IN THE BRAIN. 287
quickly, I believe immediately, inducing structural change.
On one point, the dream and insanity are often alike ; they are mental fulfilments of a wish : and the dreamer, during his slumber, and the madman throughout his derangement, are presented with the spectra of their desires, and their hopes and fears become, for these periods., reality.
It was with a reference to the wanderings of the understanding in dreams, that Sir James Mackintosh thus writes in a letter to Robert Hall :
"These will familiarise your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep and dreams, and, in process of time, they will cease to ap- pear to you much more horrible."
ASTR. And pray, Evelyn, how doth all this profound prosing affect the subject of dreams ?
Ev. By similitude. I may even remind you with devout veneration, of the dreams of a prophet, to prove the brain highly sensitive when these visions are before it. Listen to the words of Daniel, to whom gave knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom."
" I, Daniel, was— grieved in my spirit, in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me."
" And I, Daniel, fainted and was sick certain days."
Even here, may we not believe, that the Creator did not alter his law ?
It was Dr. Cullen who first drew a parallel between insanity and dreams. As some proof of his insight, we read in Lode of a man who never dreamed until he fell into a fever in the twenty-fifth year ; — in Beattie, of a young friend who never dreamt unless his health was deranged.
And Mr. Locke thus writes : " I once knew a man who was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who
288 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD
told me that he had never dreamed in his life until he had fever."
This immunity from dreams is also most marked in savages, unless during disorder or at the dying moment. Ulloa, Humboldt, and La Condamine, all agree as to the character of indolence and absence of thought and fancy in the native Americans, and it is as sure that they seldom dream.
Now whatever influence tends to arrest or derange the upper circulation of the blood in its return to the heart, or to detain it in the vessels of the brain, or which presses on an important nerve, so as to disturb the func- tion of the brain or spinal cord, by continuous sympathy, may be the remote cause of the phenomena of dreaming.
Such are the results of repletion, dyspepsia, the supine position, &c. &c.
And here, Astrophel, I meet your metaphysician.
Galen, and indeed the ancients generally, attributed dreams chiefly to indigestion ; but referred their imme- diate excitement to fumes and vapours, instead of to nervous influence, or cerebral congestion from inter- rupted circulation.
CAST. . And here, Evelyn, courtesy might have prompted you to meet my poets. Let me see, is it not Dryden who writes of —
" rising fumes of undigested food,
And noxious humours that disturb the blood ?"
And in a poem believed to have been written by Chaucer, there is this pasaage: can I remember his quaintness ?
" I supposed yt to have been some noxiall fantasy, As fallyth in dremes, in parties of the nyght, Which cometh of joy or grievous malady ; Or of robuste metes which causeth grete myght ; Ovennoche replet obscuryth the syght
IN THE BRAIN. 289
« if natural reasonne, and causyth idyll thowght, Makyth the body hevy where hyt was lyght."
And again, in the tale of the " Nonnes Freest :"
" Swevenes (dreams) engendren of repletions, And oft of fume and of complexions, When humours ben to habundaiit in a wight. Of other humours cou'd I telle also, That werken many a man in slepe moch wo," &c.
Ev. I sit reproved, fair lady. Herodotus also says, the Atlantes never dream ; which Montaigne refers to their never eating anything which has died of itself. And Burton thus sums up his precepts of prevention :
"Against fearful and troublesome dreams, incubus, and inconveniences wherewith melancholy men are mo- lested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper and of such meats as are easie of digestion, no hare, venison, beef, &c. ; not to lie on his back," &c.
Dryden, to ensure his brilliant visions of poesy, ate raw flesh ; and Mrs. Radcliffe, I am told, adopted the same plan. We know that green tea and coffee, if we do sleep, induce dreaming ; and Baptista Porta, for pro- curing quiet rest andpteasing dreams, swallowed horse- tongue after supper.
Indigestion, and that condition which is termed a weak or irritable stomach, constitute a most fruitful source of visions. The immediate or direct influence of repletion, in totally altering the sensations and the dis- position in waking moments, is a proof of its power to derange the circulation of the brain and the mental faculties in sleep.
" Somnus ut sit levis, sit tibi coena brevis."
The influence of the great sympathetic nerve in this respect is very important. With many persons, a meal
u
290
is usually followed by feelings of depression, impaired memory, unusual timidity, despondency, and other illu- sive characteristics of hysteria and hypochondriasis. And events will appear of the greatest moment, which, after the lapse of some hours, will be considered mere trifles. So that, after all, there is some truth in the idea of that archeeus, or great spirit, asserted, by Van Helmont> to sit at the cardia of the stomach, and regulate almost all the other organs.
The posture of supination will unavoidably induce that increased flow of blood to the brain which, under certain states of this fluid, is so essential to the pro- duction of brilliant waking thoughts ; an end, indeed, attained so often by another mode — the swallowing of opium.
A gentleman of high attainment was constantly haunted by a spectre when he retired to rest, which seemed to attempt his life. When he raised himself in bed, the phantom vanished, but reappeared as he resumed the recumbent posture.
Some persons always retire to bed when they wish to think ; and it is well known that Pope was often wont to ring for pens, ink, and paper, in the night, at Lord Bolingbroke's, that he might record, ere it was lost, that most sublime or fanciful poesy which flashed through his brain as he lay in bed. Such, also, was the propensity of Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who (according to Gibber, or rather Sheil, the real author of the " Lives of the Poets") " kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her grace lay, and were ready, at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night to write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory."
Henricus ab Heeres (in his " Obs. Med.") says, that
IN THE BRA I\. -291
when he was a professor, he used to rise in the ni^lit, open his desk, compose much, shut his desk, and again to bed. On his waking he was conscious of nothing but the happy result of his compositions.
The engineer, Brindley, even retired to bed for a day or two, when he was reflecting on a grand or scientific project.
I deny not that the darkness or stillness of night may have had some influence during this inspiration. I may also allow that some few individuals compose best while they are walking ; but this peripatetic exertion is calculated, itself, to produce what we term determination of blood to the head. I have heard of a most remark- able instance of the power of position in influencing mental energy, in a German student, who was accus- tomed to study and compose with his head on the ground and his feet elevated, and resting against the wall.
And this is the fragment of a passage from Tissot, on the subject of monomania :
" Nous avons vu etudier dans cette academic
il n'y a pas long-terns, un jeune homme de merite, qui s'etant mis dans1si4te, de decouvrir la quadrature du circle, est mort, fou, a Ph6tel Dieu, a Paris."
You will smile when I tell you that the tints of the landscape are brighter to our eyes if we reverse the posi- tion of the head.
And now, with your leave, gentle ladies, I will bring phrenology to my aid.
If we assume that there may be distinct portions of the brain, organs of comparison, individuality, cau- sality, &c., we naturally regard them as the source of that combined faculty which we denominate judgment. We might argue, that if these organs were permanently deficient, fatuity, or, at least, extreme folly, would be the result. By parity of reasoning we might infer,
u2
292 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD
that if the function of such organs were for a time sus- pended, imagination, having lost its mentor, would, as it were, run wild, and an extravagant dream, granting an excitement, would be the result. If the organ of colour be excited, and form be asleep, we may have an eccentric drawing. If language and imagination are both awake, a poem or romance ; so it may chance, that if all the proper organs are awake, there may be a rational dream.
I yield not to the too finely-spun hypotheses of Gall, and his first whimsical topography of the cranium ; the incipient idea of which, by the by, he owes to the Ara- bian phrenologists who, even in the olden time, had glimpses, although they decided on a different location. Imagination was in the frontal region, reason in the medial, and memory in the occipital.
In Dr. Spurzheim's beautiful demonstration of the brain, he exhibits it almost as one large convoluted web. While the ultra-phrenologist is unravelling these convolutions, it is strange that he sees not the incon- sistency of his cranial divisions. Some of the boundary lines of his organs must be drawn across these convo- lutions. It will ever be impossible to decide the exact course of these, but the lines should be drawn in the direction of their fibres ; for if the faculty be seated in one convolution, that faculty would proceed in the course of its fibres, and not across the fissure from one lobule to another. Now the most frequent coincidence of the possession of great mental power, with full development of the frontal region of the skull, will naturally lead us to believe that it may depend on causation. Indeed a skull, as well as expression, may be phrenologically changed by culture or thought. The skull of William Godwin, in early life, indicated an intellectual develop- ment ; then it became sensual, the occipital organs being in excess ; and again, as his mind was subject to more
IN THE BRAIN. 293
moral culture, the intellectual or frontal again prevailed. I am informed, also, by Miss A , that there was ob- served a progressive development of the intellectual region in the head of her father, an acute and deep thinker.
We have analogies to this in physiognomy. Caspar Hauser lost some of the negro fulness about his mouth after he had been introduced to society. Perhaps the contrasted beauty and deformity in the forehead and eye, and in the mouth of Sheridan, was a faithful indi- cation of that paradox of mind which was never more perfectly displayed than in the intellectual dignity and moral deficiency of this man. As no function, then, either of brain or gland, can be carried on without a due supply of blood, it will follow that position may materi- ally influence the integrity of these functions. The seat of the organs I have alluded to, if cranial develop- ment supports me, may be determined on the fore part of the head, behind the osfrontis, portions of the cerebral mass which, in the supine position, are usually most ele- vated above the centre of circulation. " The more noble the faculties, the higher are the organs situated." These, consequentiy^^nay endure a deficiency of sti- mulus, in comparison with other organs more favourably situated. The phrenologist, then, will endeavour to prove, that the supine position generally produces vas- cular pressure on particular parts or organs of the encephalon ; and he will argue that dreams arise from individual organs abstractedly or unconnectedly acting. There is one spot on the cranium, indeed, identified by Dr. Spurzheim as a most important item in the compo- sition of a good dreamer. He tells us, that " persons who have the part above and a little behind the organ of ideality developed, are much prone to mysticism, to see visions and ghosts, and to dream."
It may not be difficult to believe in this partial func-
294 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD, ETC.
tion of the brain, when we recollect how often the loss of one faculty will be connected with paralytic dis- orders. The faculty of perception may be lost, unless the impression on the mind is made through a parti- cular sense. Thus patients may be unable to compre- hend that name or subject when it was pronounced, or related, which they will immediately do, if written down and presented to the sight, — the optic nerve may transmit while the auditory has lost its power.
" Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, Quam qute sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus."
Of this axiom there is an illustrative story, by Dar- win, in his "Zoonomia." — -A paralytic man could see and hear, but the mind was conscious of vision only. If the hour of breakfast were named to him, he repeated it and was passive ; but if the hour were pointed out on the watch, he comprehended at once, and called for break- fast.
On the contrary, there may be the same imperfection of outward transmission ; the lingual nerves, influencing the tongue to sound a name inapplicable to the idea, the person often reversing the names of articles which he is continually using.
These phenomena regarding nerves of sense, then, are strictly analogous to those which we recognize in those parts of the brain which are intimately connected with, or influenced by, these nerves of sense : thus in analogy to waking illusions, we have the imperfect asso- ciations of a dream when the organs are irregularly acted on.
INCUBUS, OR NIGHT-MARE.
" O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream."
ROMEO AND JULIET.
" Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, And weigh thee down."
KING RICHARD III.
ASTR. I will no longer hesitate to grant that the dream occurs in the moment of departing or returning con- sciousness. Still, are you not reversing .the order of these phenomena ? may not the excitement of vague ideas in the mind^be, itself, the cause of waking, and not the consequence of slumber, or half-sleep ?
Ev. I believe not, except the sensibility of the body be influenced by touch, or sound, or by oppressive con- gestions of blood in the brain, causing that state of dis- turbance which reduces sound sleep to slumber; as in the instance of "Night-mare,5* which is to the mind what sensation is to the body, restoring it to a state of half -consciousness, essential to that sort of dreaming, in which we make a painful effort to relieve, and at last awake.
CAST. Mara, by my fay ! the night-spectre of Scan- dinavia; that evil spirit of the Runic theology, who weighed upon the bosom, and bereaved her victims of
296 INCUBUS, OR NIGHT-MARE.
speech and motion : that oppressive dream, therefore, termed Hag-ridden, or, hi the Anglo-Saxon, Elf-siderme. Is it not she, of whom it is written, —
" We seem to run, and destitute of force, Our sinking limbs forsake us in the course. In vain we heave for breath, in vain we cry ; The nerves unbraced, their usual strength deny, And on the tongue the faltering accents die."
Ev. A very faithful picture.
Sound sleep will often be broken by pain or uneasi- ness occurring in a particular part of the body; the dream will then often bear an instructive reference to the seat and nature of such pain. If cramp has attacked any of the limbs, or the head has been long confined back, the dream may be enlivened by some analogous tortures in the dungeon of the Inquisition ; and it is curious, that a waking wish for some relief from unplea- sant sensations will be re- excited in the dream, — a dreamy fulfilment. Captain Back, during one of the Arctic expeditions, when nearly in a state of starvation, often dreamed of indulging in a delicious repast. And Professor Stewart thus writes, — " I have been told by a friend, that, having occasion to apply a bottle of hot water to his feet, he dreamed that he was making a journey to the top of Mount ^Etna, and that he found the heat of the ground insupportable. Another, having a blister applied to the head, dreamed that he was scalped by a party of Indians."
If on these occasions we are warm in bed, our dreams will be often pleasing, and the scenes in the tropics ; if cold, or chilly, the reverse, and we shall believe our- selves in Zeinbla.
Holcroft had been musing on the probabilities of life and death, and one night went in pain to bed. He dreamed his body was severed above his hips, and again
INCUBUS, OR NIGHT-MARE. 297
joined in a surprising manner. He was astonished to think he was alive, and afraid of being struck, lest the parts should be dissevered.
Tempests heard in a slumber will be often associated with a dream of shipwreck ; and some persons will dream of their having given pain to, or injured, others : they wake, and find some close analogy to their awn sensations.
It is recorded that Cornelius Rufus dreamed that he was blind, and so indeed he awoke.
In other cases, we have the double touchy as it is termed; dreams of forcible detention occur, and the sleeper has found that he had with one hand tightly grasped the other. If this hand had been moved in sleep unconsciously, the dream, no doubt, would have been essentially changed. And thus we have all the phenomena realised, which Shakspere has referred to in the visitations of his incorrigible Mab.
Elliston was always awaked by nightmare when sleep- ing in a strange bed.
As in some persons, by submitting the body to certain impressions during sleep, associated dreams may be produced at pleasure ; so if the body or legs hang over the side of a bed, we may instantly dream of falling from a^pfecipice : and it is curious that, under these illusions, we awake when we are past hope and our despair is at its height: in falling, at the moment we are about to be dashed to atoms ; and, in drowning, when the last bubbles are gurgling in the throat.
When we read in the Bodleian, Astrophel, I will point you to other curious experiments of this sort, by