Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-21
WONDERS OF soMNAMBuLIsM.
aeepwalkers Who Had More Power
In Trance Than In Normal State.

From the Baltimore News.
Prof. Pierre Janet OF the Paris Sorbonne
In Mccoy Hall Of the Johns Hopkins Uni
versity recently delivered q lecture on
Mind and Medicine" and dealt with hys-
terra. particularly that form of hysteria
which evidences itself In somnambulism.
II will ask you to consider one OF the
most typical and characteristic symptoms
OF hysteria. and that is somnambulism."
he said. ITO understand It well is. 1 be-
fieve. to understand all hysterical phases
that are more or less constructed on the
same model.
"What Is somnambulsm? Popularity. n
sOmnambulist is an individual who thinks
and acts while he IL asleep. That answer
Is not very clear. for we do not know very
well what sleep Is You will find nowhere a
more beautiful description of the popular
idea Of somnambulism than In Shake
speare's tragedy of Macbeth Modern ex-
amples are much less dramatic, but you
will let me cite few which have come
under my observations:
There is a young woman, twenty nine
years old. whom 1 will call 'Gib. She
heard one day that her niece. who lived
next door, had thrown herself out OF the
window in At Of delirium. She rushed
downstairs and was confronted with the
sight of the body in the street. After the
first shock she seemed to be but little
moved, prepared the DOdy Tor the lunerai
and was quiet and calm. But from that
time on she grew more and more gloomy.
Nearly every day now she enters into
strange trance. She seems as IL asleep and
she speaks softly to her niece. calling her
by name, Pauline. She tells her that she
admres her courage, that her death was a
beautiful one. She rises, goes to the win
dow, opens 1t and IL her friends did not
stop her. she would undoubtedly throw
herself into the street.
Another case. a woman thirty-five years
old, who was frightened by a lioness at the
zoo. She was thrown in a delirium. which
lasted eight days, and since then she re-
peats these fits of delirium She walks
on all tours, rushes on people tries to bite
them, even seizes photographs of children
and chews them up. and acts altogether as
if she herself were a lioness
There Is a man of thirty. with both legs
paralyzed, who has been an invalid for
years In the middle of the night he rises
slowly from his bed, takes his pillow and
hugs 1t close. walks out of the room,
through courtyard and climbs to the
top of the house. His friends have diff
Guilty in reaching him. for the moment he
awakes his legs become paraiyzed again.
When awakened he does not understand
how he has reached the housetop and why
he, a man sick with palsy, should have
been carried there.
again there 10 a girl. made Ill with de-
spair at her mothers death. They lived In
a garrett and for two months before the
mothers death the girl was under great
strain, tending her mother and earning her
living at the sewing machine. After the
old lady's death the girl tried to revive the
body, lifting 1t to sitting position and
appealing to 1t. She now has the singular
habit of acting these scenes over again
while in a somnambulistic state. No actress
could rehearse these lugubrious scenes with
such perfection"