SOMNAMBULISM, or Sleepwalking. According to a report made to the Physical Society of Lausanne, by a committee appointed to examine a young man who was accustomed to walk in his sleep, the disposition to this singular habit seems to depend on a particular affection of the nerves, which both seizes and quits the patient during[7:20:477] sleep. Under the influence of this affection, the imagination represents to him the objects which strike him while awake, with as much force as if they really affected his senses; but it does not make him perceive any of those which are actually presented to his senses, except in so far as they are connected with the dreams which engross him at the time.

If during this state the imagination has no determined purpose, he receives the impression of objects as if he were awake; only, however, when the imagination is excited to lend its attention towards them. The perceptions obtained in this state are very accurate; and when once received, the imagination renews them occasionally with as much force as if they were again acquired by means of the senses. But the impressions received during this state of the senses disappear entirely when the person awakes, and do not return till the return of the same disposition in the nervous system.

The remarks of this committee were made on a lad named Devaud, who was thirteen years and a half old, and who lived in the town of Vevey. He possessed a robust consti tution; but his nervous system appeared to be organized with peculiar delicacy, and to discover marks of the greatest sensibility and irritability. His senses of smell, taste, and touch, were exquisite: he was subject to fits of immoderate and involuntary laughter; and he sometimes wept without any apparent cause. His sleep was at all times unquiet, but particularly when the fits were about to seize him. During his sleep, motions were observable in every part of his body, with starting and palpitations; he uttered broken words, sometimes sat up in his bed and lay down again. He then began to pronounce words more distinctly, and rising abruptly, acted as he was instigated by the dream which then possessed him.

From the facts which were brought under the observation of this committee, they inferred that the functions of the somnambulist, while under the influence of this affection, are not suspended, as to what he wishes to see, or the objects about which his imagination is occupied; that he may also be disposed to receive those impressions when his imagination has no other object at the time; that in order to see, he is obliged to open his eyes as much as he can, but when the impression is once made it remains; that objects may strike his sight without striking his imagination, if it is not interested in them; and that he is sometimes inform ed of the presence of objects without either seeing or touching them.

A great number of similar instances might very easily be accumulated. Such anomalous operations of the mind it is perhaps beyond the power of philosophy to explain; but a very small portion of philosophy, or even common sense, will enable us to dispose of another class of vagaries imput ed to animal magnetism. The magnetisers are a sort of conjurers, who, according to their own account, are able to superinduce a state of sleep, and, while their patients are in that state, to exercise a marvellous influence over their volitions. Deleuze, in his Histoire Critique du Magnétisme Animal, furnishes these very edifying details: “When magnetism produces somnambulism, the being who finds himself in this state acquires a prodigious extension in the sense of feeling. Several of his exterior organs, usually those of sight and hearing, are rendered torpid, and all the sensations which depend on them are internally performed. There is in this state an infinite number of shades and varieties; but in order to form a correct judgment, it must be examined in its greatest remoteness from the state of waking, passing over in silence every thing that experience has not established. The somnambulist has his eyes closed, and does not see by the eyes nor hear by the cars; but he sees and hears better than a waking man. He sees and hears only those with whom he is in relation. He sees only that which he looks at, and he usually looks only at those objects to which his attention is directed. He is subject to the will of his magnetiser for every thing that cannot harm him, and for every thing that is not opposed to his ideas of justice and truth. He feels the will of his magnetiser; he perceives the magnetic fluid; he sees, or rather he feels, the interior of his own body, and those of others; but he usu ally remarks only the parts which are not in the natural state, and which disturb the harmony of the economy; he retraces in his memory the remembrance of things which he had forgotten while awake; he has previsions and presensations, which may be erroneous in several circumstances, and which are limited in their extent; he expresses himself with a surprising facility; he is not exempt from vanity; he improves of himself, for a certain length of time, if he is wisely managed; he spoils if he is ill directed. When he reenters into the natural state, he absolutely loses the recollection of all sensations, and of all ideas which he has had in the state of somnambulism; so that these two states are as unconnected with one another, as if the somnambulist and the waking man were two different beings.” The simple enunciation of such absurdities as these, seems to preclude the necessity of all formal discussion.

In addition to their other attributes, some of the magnetic somnambulists are endowed with a miraculous skill in physic. “Those patients in crisis,” says Cloquet, “who are named physicians, have a supernatural power, by which, on touching a patient who is presented to them, on carrying the hand even above the clothes, they feel what is the affected organ, the suffering part; they declare it, and mention nearly the suitable remedies. A singularity not less remarkable than all those which I have enumerated is, that those physicians who for several hours have touched pa ticnts, and have reasoned with them, remember nothing, absolutely nothing, when the master pleases to disenchant them, and to restore them to their natural state. The time which has elapsed from their entrance into the crisis to their coming out of it, is, so to speak, annihilated to such a de gree, that if a covered table be presented to these sleeping physicians, they will eat and drink; and if, the table being uncovered, the master restores them to their natural state, they will have no recollection of having done so. The master has the power not only, as I have already said, to make himself be understood by these physicians in crisis, but I have repeatedly seen him present from a distance his finger to one of these physicians, always in crisis, and in a state of spasmodic sleep, make him to follow him where he pleas ed, or send him to a distance from himself, either to his house or to different places, which he mentally indicated without telling him.”

Another phenomenon, equally worthy of admiration, is the power of reading without the aid of eyes. Pigeaire, a physician of Montpellier, is answerable for the following statement of his daughter’s performances in this new department. “We made her read with her eyes closed by magnetic sleep, or covered with a handkerchief in the form of a bandage; she read with the greatest facility characters printed or written, not only in applying her fingers to the paper, but also with a plate of glass interposed between the book and her fingers. More than forty persons have been witnesses of this experiment, which we took care to perform before only a few persons at a time, in order not to disturb the little somnambulist. This experiment has never failed; once only it has been incomplete. The little girl, in the state of somnambulism, named certain objects en closed in snuffboxes; announced persons previously to their entrance into the room in which she was; and several times mentioned the hour and the minute on a hunting watch which she held in her hand.” Those who are acquainted with the waking performances of Miss Macavoy of Liverpool, will experience no difficulty in understanding the sleeping performances of Miss Pigeaire of Montpellier.[7:20:478]