INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN.
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Dendy, Walter Cooper
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 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 function 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 immediate excitement to fumes and vapours, instead of to nervous influence, or cerebral congestion from interrupted 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 passage: 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;
Overmoche replet obscuryth the syght
Of natural reasonne, and causyth idyll thowght,
Makyth the body hevy where hyt was lyght.”
And again, in the tale of the “Nonnes Preest:”
“Swevenes (dreams) engendren of repletions,
And oft of fume and of complexions,
When humours ben to habundant 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 molested, 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 procuring quiet rest and pleasing 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 disposition 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 cœna brevis.”
The influence of the great sympathetic nerve in this respect is very important. With many persons, a meal is usually followed by feelings of depression, impaired memory, unusual timidity, despondency, and other illusive 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 archæus, 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 production 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 Cibber, 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 when he was a professor, he used to rise in the night, 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 remarkable instance of the power of position in influencing mental energy, in a German student, who was accustomed 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 étudier dans cette académie il n’y a pas long-temps, un jeune homme de mérite, qui s’étant mis dans la tête, de découvrir la quadrature du circle, est mort, fou, à l’hôtel Dieu, à Paris.”
You will smile when I tell you that the tints of the landscape are brighter to our eyes if we reverse the position of the head.
And now, with your leave, gentle ladies, I will bring phrenology to my aid.