The Appeal., 1905-04-29
Common Causes
g Of Dreams

has Just happened in our family,'' said
young man to his physician few days
town not far from here dreamed for
two or three nights in succession that
she was being cut in two or had met
with some other dreadful accident.
"she was very much disturbed over
it, thinking it must be bad omen, but
as she did not believe in fortune telling
ing or anything of that sort, she made
diseases. s Some Of her relatives smiled
when they heard Of her in intention and
worse than slight attack of indiges-
| tion easily curable by some simple house
| hold remedy, and that she was making
| always extremely careful in her diet,
and having none Of the symptoms of in
! digestion, this explanation DID not satisfy
| scribed for her, and she came home in
! much more cheerful frame of mind. Now
comes the part Of the story that puzzles
warned him that perhaps his mother hao
| not long to live, as persistent dreams of
bad kind in & woman roa1ea;n of her age gtr Wfre
| That very night she had an apoplectic
stroke, and died within a few hours.
Hoy Do you, you e. explain an occurrence Of this
what do you think of it yourself""
Il don't know: Like my aunt, I am
not at all superstitious, and yet I cann9t 1nH9t
| help thinking that now and again people
do receive in dreams warning of impend-
| Inc calamity or approaching DEATH
Ths Ehfoe @nhse Of s nse
that has not yet been fully explored: e In
general, it may, be said that dreams
we have seen and heard in our waking
hours, of Impressions and ideas lately re-
ceived and Of ideas more or lefS S., closely
dreams are caused by certain morbid or
uncomfortable states of the body during
Of BASED his propSecy
this fact
"But how could she tell him what state
her. body was in during sleep. Appar-
emily she was not suffering from any dis
ease.'
"Such information is not always neces-
sary. 1t is a well-known medical fact
that often before the signs of disease
appear, morbid dreams occur-prodromlc
dreams, as they are technically called
and in some cases each disease has it's
own peculiar dream. Thus heart disease
is frequently accompanied by dreams Of
impending death; previous to attacks of
cerebral hemorrhage patients dream of
experiencing some frightful calamity as
of being cut in two, which your aunt
dreamed; intermittent fever may be an
nounced by dreams Of a terrifying char
! acter, and these are also among the
signs of cerebral congestion. Dreams
| about fire have sometimes, in women, oc-
| Cured just before hemorrhage; dreams
about blood and red objects are COM
person dreams of distorted forms there
is abdominal obstruction or his liver is
not in good order. And so with many
"But," said the young man, what is
it, precisely: that starts one dreaming
in this fashion?'
"Some bodily sensation over which the
Imagination runs riot in that half-awake
| condition in which dreams commonly
cur. The reflective faculties of the mind.
Judgment, reason. ,volition,, the powers of
choice and control, are all in allegiance,
| and so there is unbridled sway of the
imagination and an incoherent associa-
'"This has been proved by actual ex-
another. found that when the lips were
ter being torn. from the lips when tweez-
ers were made to vibrate near the ear,
there was dream of church bells, and
experience of us all. Who has not had a
frightful nightmare because of an indi-
gestible or heavy meal eaten late at
"The sense of suffocation in sleep is
| often due to imperfect ventilation of the
o If the bo@ns is b9 too
sensation of falling from great height
may be due to nothing more than the in
voluntary movement e Of the foot: The
mon dream is an unpleasant legacy from
our remote ancestors of the ape family,
who were accustomed to sleep on the
branches of trees, and when they lost
their hold-as they did sometimes-the
consequences were so serious as to make
the incident a perpetual nightmare to
them and their descendants ever after.
| ward
physicians are occasionally respon-
sible for bad dreams. A man fell on
his head, and to ward off inf1amma ton
of the brain his physicians put a strong
plaster on his head, and this gave the
patient y considerable pain. Toward
morning he fell asleep. and dreamed
very distinctly that he had fallen into
the hands of a party of Indians who
were scalping him. Here is another in
stance of more remarkable dream of
the same kind. An English general in