Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HALLUCINATIONS. somnambulists unquestionably do perform in their sleep, there is certainly no reason in the nature of things why they should not set fire to the house, or commit suicide or homicide.* There is a condition intermediate between sleeping and waking in which, before consciousness is fully restored, the ideas and hallucinations of a dream persist for a time; so that a man, even though awake, shall think he sees the images or hears the voices of his dream. On awaking one morning out of a distressing dream, says Spinoza in one of his letters, just as day was breaking, the images I had had present to me in my dream floated before my eyes as distinctly as if they had been actual objects. One form in particular, that of a leprous negro, whom I had never seen in my life, pre- sented itself to me with singular distinctness, but faded and in a great measure disappeared when, to turn my thoughts to something else, I fixed my eyes on a book; as soon, however, as I allowed my eyes to wander from the page, the vision of the blackamoor presented itself with the same vividness as before. By-and-by it began to fade, and anon it disappeared entirely. To the same effect hear Casaubon:— Aristotle, in his treatise on Dreams, gives an instance of it in children and young boys; who after some terrible dream, though they be out of their dream, and their eyes full open (and light * The American newspapers have recently contained the account of a boy who in his sleep killed another boy, having left his bed in a state of somnambulism, and mounted into his victim's room by means of a ladder. When in prison, he got up in the night in a state of somnambu- lism, laid hold of a razor, and attempted the life of another prisoner.