The well-known case of the officer, narrated by Dr. James Gregory, is one of the same in termediate class; rather allied, in our appre hension, to somnambulism than to ordinary dreaming. This gentleman, who served in the expedition to Louisburgh in 1758, was in the habit of acting his dreams ; and their course could be completely directed by whispering into his ear, especially if this was done by a friend with whose voice he was familiar ; that his companions in the transport were in the constant habit of amusing themselves at his expense. At one time they conducted him through the whole progress of a quarrel, which ended in a duel ; and when the parties were supposed to be met, a pistol was put into his hand, which he fired, and was awakened by the report. On another occasion they found him asleep on the top of a locker or bunker in the cabin, when they rnade him believe he had fallen overboard, and exhorted him to save himself by swimming. Ile imme diately imitated all the motions of swimming. They then told him that a shark was pur suing him, and entreated him to dive for his life. He instantly did so, with such force as to throw himself entirely from the locker upon the cabin-floor, by which he was much bruised, and awakened of course. After the landing of the army at Louisburgh, his friends found hint one day asleep in his tent, and evidently much annoyed by the cannonading. They then made him believe that he was engaged, when he expressed great fear, and showed an evident disposition to run away. Against this they remonstrated ; but, at the seine time, in. creased his fears, by imitating the groans of the wounded and the dying; and when he asked, as he often did, who was down, they named his particular friends. At last they told him that the man next himself in the line had fallen, when he instantly sprung from his bed, rushed out of the tent, and was roused from his danger and his dream together, by falling over the tent ropes. After these experiments, he had no distinct recollection of his dreams, but only a confused feeling of oppression and fatigue; and used to tell his friends that he was sure they had been playing some trick upon him. This is another point of conformity with somnam bulism; one of whose most distinctive pecu liarities it is, that neither the trains of thought nor.any of the events of the somnambulistic state are remembered in the ordinary waking condition, though the impression of the feelings strongly excited during that state, is some times continued. Both the trains of thought and the events of the somnambulistic state, however, are frequently remembered with the utmost vividness on the recurrence of that state, even at a very distant interval : and of the interval, however long it may have beett, there is no consciousness whatever. The same thing, but more rarely, occurs in dreaming ; the dreamer sometimes recollecting a previous dream, and even taking up and continuing its thread, although he could not in the least retrace it in his waking state.
A retnarkable case of spontaneous somnam bulism, which occurred within our own ex perience, will serve to illustrate many of the most characteristic features of the condition in question. The subject of it was a young lady of highly nervous temperament ; and the affection occurred in the course of a long and trying illness, in which almost every form of hysteria, simulating tetanus, epilepsy, coma, and paralysis, had successively presented itself. Although natural somnambulism ordinarily arises out of ordinary sleep, yet in this instance the patient usually passed into the somnam bulistic condition from the waking state ; the transition being immediately manifested by the peculiar expression of the countenance. In this condition her ideas were at first entirely fixed upon one subject—the death of her only brother, which had occurred some years pre viously. To this brother she had been very strongly attached ; she had nursed him in his last illness ; and it was perhaps the return of the anniversary of his death about the time when the somnambulism first occurred, that gave to her thoughts that particular direction. She
talked constantly of him, retraced all the cir cumstances of his illness, and was unconscious of anything that was said to her which had not direct reference to this subject. On one oc casion she mistook her sister's husband for her lost brother ; imagined that he was come from heaven to visit her; and kept up a long conversation with him under this impression. This conversation was perfectly rational on her side, allowance being made for the funda mental errors of her data. Thus, she begged her supposed brother to pray with her ; and on his repeating the Lord's Prayer, she interrupted him after the sentence " forgive us our tres passes," with the remark, " But you need not pray thus ; your sins are already forgiven." Although her eyes were open, she recognised no one in this state, not even her own sister, who, it should be mentioned, had not been at home at the time of her brother's illness.
On another occasion, it happened that, when she passed into this condition, her .sister, who was present, was wearing a locket, containing some of their deceased brother's hair. As soon as she perceived this locket, she made a violent snatch at it, and would not be satisfied until she had got it into her own possession, when she began to talk to it in the most endearing and even extravagant terms. Her recognition of this locket, when she did not perceive that her sister was the wearer of it, was a very curious fact, which may be explained in t WO ways, each of them in accordance with the known laws of somnambulism. Either the concen tration of her thoughts on this one subject caused her to remember only that which was immediately connected with her brother ; and her unconsciousness of the presence of her sister might be due to the absence of the latter at the time of his death, which caused her to be less connected with him in the thoughts of the soinnambulist:—or it may have happened that she was directed to this locket by the sense of smell, which is fre quently exalted in a very remarkable degree in the somnambulistic state. (See SMELL) Her feelings were so strongly excited by the posses sion of the locket, that it was judged prudent to check their continuance; and as she was inaccessible to all entreaties on the subject, three was employed to obtain it from her. She was so determined, however, not to relinquish it, and was so angry at the gentle violence used, that it was found necessary to abandon the attempt; and she became calmer after a time, and at last passed off into ordinary sleep, which was in her case the successor, instead of being (as it usually is) the predecessor, of the somnambulistic state. Before going to sleep, however, she placed the locket under her pillow, remarking, " Now I have hid it safely, and they shall not take it frotn me." On awaking in the morning,she had not the slightest conscious ness of what had passed ; but the impression of the excited feelings remained ; for she remarked to her sister,—" I cannot tell what it is that makes me feel so ; but every time that S— comes near me, I have a kind of shuddering sensation ;" — the individual named being a servant, whose constant at tention to her had given rise to a feeling of strong attachment on the side of the invalid, but who had been the chief actor in the scene or the previous evening. This feeling wore off in the course of a day or two. A few days afterwards, the somnambulism again recurred ; and being upon her bed at the time, she immediately began to search for the locket under her pillow. In consequence of its having been removed in the interval (in order that she might not, by accidentally finding it, be led to inquire into the cause of its presence there, of which it was thought better to keep her in ignorance), she was unable to find it ; at which she expressed great disappointment, and continued feeling for it, with the remark, " It must be there ; I put it there myself a few minutes ago ; and no one can have taken it away." In this state, the presence of S— renewed her previous feelings of anger; and it was only by sending S— out of the room that she could be calmed and induced to sleep.