The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish].

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stamped me with the aspect of hoar antiquity. The first of these visions may have arisen from read- ing Hoffman’s “ Devil’s Elixir,” where there is an account of a man who supposed he had a double, or, in other words, was both himself and not him- self; and the second had perhaps its origin in the Heathen Mythology, a subject to which I am ex- tremely partial, and which abounds in stories of metamorphosis. Such dreams as occur in a state of drunkenness are remarkable for their extravagance. Exagger- ation beyond limits is a very general attendant up- on them; and they are usually of a more airy and fugitive character than those proceeding from almost any other source. The person seems as if he possessed unusual lightness, and could mount into the air, or float upon the clouds, while every object around him reels and staggers with emotion. But of all dreams, there are none which, for unli- mited wildness, equal those produced by narcotics. An eminent artist, under the influence of opium, fancied the ghastly figures in Holbein’s “ Dance of Death” to become vivified—each grim skeleton being endowed with life and motion, and dancing and grinning with an aspect of hideous reality. The “English Opium Eater,” in his “ Confessions,” has given a great variety of eloquent and appall- ing descriptions of the effects produced by this drug upon the imagination during sleep. Listen to one of them: — “Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands
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