The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish].

  • Macnish, Robert, 1802-1837.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    stupor never departs from him; and his whole being is locked up in one mighty spasm. Some- times he is forcing himself through an aperture too small for the reception of his body, and is there arrested and tortured by the pangs of suffocation produced by the pressure to which he is exposed ; or he loses his way in a narrow labyrinth, and gets involved in its contracted and inextricable mazes; or he is entombed alive in a sepulchre, beside the mouldering dead. There is, in most cases, an intense reality in all that he sees, or hears, or feels. The aspects of the hideous phan- toms which harass his imagination are bold and defined; the sounds which greet his ear appall- ingly distinct ; and when any dimness or confu- sion of imagery does prevail, it is of the most fearful kind, leaving nothing but dreary and miserable impressions behind it. Much of the horror experienced in nightmare will depend upon the natural activity of the ima- gination, upon the condition of the body, and up- on the state of mental exertion before going to sleep. If, for instance, we have been engaged in the perusal of such works as “The Monk,” “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” or “Satan’s Invisible World Discovered ;” and if an attack of nightmare should supervene, it will be aggravated into sevenfold horror by the spectral phantoms with which our minds have been thereby filled. We will enter into all the fearful mysteries of these writings, which, instead of being mitigated by slumber, acquire an