Stray leaves from a physician's portfolio / by James Crichton-Browne.

  • James Crichton-Browne
Date:
[1927]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Stray leaves from a physician's portfolio / by James Crichton-Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    DREAMY MENTAL STATES1 Dreamy mental states, voluminous mental states, as they have been also called, are of interest from a medical, a psychological and a philosophical point of view. The simplest form of these dreamy mental states— a sense of Reminiscence it has been called by some, a sense of Prescience by others—and the application to it of such apparently contradictory names suggests that it is somewhat mysterious in nature and difficult of interpretation—is to be found described vaguely, but recognisably, in the writings of many of our most gifted authors. It consists in an impression suddenly taking possession of the mind that the passing moment of life has been lived once before—or must be lived once again— that surrounding objects have been seen once before, or must be seen again exactly as they, at the instant, present themselves. “ How often,” says Sir Walter Scott, in Guy Mannering, “ do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious, ill-defined consciousness that neither the scene nor the subject is entirely new; nay, we feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation that has not yet taken place? 55 1 The Cavendish Lecture. Delivered before the West London Medico-Chronological Society, June 30th, 1895.
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