Des Arc Weekly Citizen

Medical Signs of Dreams.

In the Quarterly Journal Psychological Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence just published, there is quite a long and able disquisition on "Dreaming," from which we extract the following: "Lively dreams are, in general, a sign of the excitement of nervous action. So it dreams a sign of slight irritation of the brain: often, in nervous fevers, announcing the approach of a favorable crisis. Frightful dreams are a sign of determination of blood to the head. Dreams about fire are, in women, sign of impending hemorrhage. Dreams about blood and red objects are signs of inflammatory conditions. Dreams about rain and water are often signs of diseased mucous membranes and dropsy. Dreams of distorted forms are frequently a sign of abdominal obstruction and disorder of the liver. Dreams in which the patient sees any part of the body especially suffering indicates disease in that part. Dreams about death often precede apoplexy, which is connected with determination of blood to the head. The nightmare (incubus, ephialtes), with great sensitiveness, is a sign of determination of blood to the chest. To these, says Baron von Feuchtersleben, we may add that dreams of dogs, after the bite of a mad dog, often precede the appearance of hydrophobia, but may be only the consequence of an excited imagination." Dr. Forbes Winslow quotes several cases in which dreams are said to have been prognostics: Arnaud de Villeneuve dreamed one night that a black cat bit him on the side. The next day an anthrax appeared on the part bitten. A patient of Galen's dreamed that one of his limbs was changed to stone. Some days after his leg was paralyzed. Roger d'Outreyn Knight of the Company of Douglas went to sleep in good health; towards the middle of the night, he saw in his dream, a man infected with the plague quite naked, who attacked him with fury, threw him on the ground after a desperate struggle, and, holding him between his open thighs, vomited the plague into his mouth. Three days after he was seized with the plague, and died. Hippocrates remarks that dreams in which one sees black spectres are a bad omen.