Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, December 26, 1915, Page 22

Tar, O SUNDAY BEE MAGAZINE PAGE| -+ e Betrayed Himself by lalking inHisSlee Prof. Lough Discusses the Unfortunate Dream of Mr. John Hutchinson Which Landed Him in a Divorce Court and Explains What Science Knows About Our Sleep Talk ’l‘estjmony in the Divorce Suit of Mrs. John J. Hutchinson Against Her Husband Rawyer—Were any facts brought to your attention in the early part of this year that caused you to question your husband in regard to his conduct! . Mrs. Hutchinson—VYes, because one night I heard him calling a girl’s name. Lawyer—Where was he; explain to the Judge just what took place, and where? Mrs, H~In bed it was, mSciaiccHacto Y HAT is a dream? Why do we dream? How do we dream? What do our dreams mean? That all men dream there can be no | Many peychologists are convinced that do not have such a thing as dream- sleep. Aristotle admitted that horses, oxen, sheep, goats and dogs and i{;‘ EE a;?} E, g '%' it i i terrifiest me through vis- Greek Hippoorates in the fifth B. C. attributes the mass of to /the influences of the mind upon the body. He was the first to ap- proach & rational solution of dream prob- lems. The higher animal kingdom prob- ably spends a third of its life in the mysterious process of dreaming. What . is the meaning and purpose of this world of illusion? The little domestic tragedy printed above on this page from the court rec- ords of & New Jersey court, contributes interesting case to the paychologist. should a jury go in coneldering which at best is made of the In this particular in- corroborative evidence the sleeper was re- & real incldent of w far can we go p talk as evi- do not know. E u i ! i E. ek § E'g % H i 0y Say About Dreams diers often sleep at sentinel duty =all their pow- ers are asleep except the mus- cles of the X Sailors sleep clinging to the mast. Sir Willlam ‘Hamilton tells of & postman at the Universityot . Halle who car- rled the mall to & village elght miles distant This postman used to go to sleep after leaw The End of ing Halle, keep the Dream— the right road, By Dampt wake at the little bridge he had to cross just before reaching the end of his journey. Hoffman quotes Hrasmus in & story of his friend Professor Oporinus, of Basel, He once took a long journey with a distinguished bookseller, and just before they reached the inn where they were to spend. the night an old manu- soript in Sanskrit was found that so greatly interested the bookseller that he persuaded Oporinus to sit up and read it to him. The result was that the pro- fessor fell asleep as to all other powers but kept on reading for a long time, not knowing when he awoke anything about what he had been doing. He had to all intents and purpo.es been talking in his sleep. Dogs bark and growl in their sleep. A coon dog, with one bark for the chase and one for the stand, can sometimes be followed through an exciting dream chase by the nature of his sleep talk. Parrots often chatter in their sleep. Canary birds have been known to twitter their songs in sleep. The human animal is a notorious sleep talker. It is all part of the dream process. As In sleep walking, the emo- tions and nerves and motor centres are stimulated in the dream state just as are in a state of consciousness. The physiological processes seem to be similar, If, then, in our sleep talk we make no exception to the rule that our dreams are always made up of those things that we have had something to do with in our past experience, are we to accept sleep talk as vital to truth? By all means, no!. In dream talk we may chatter on in an \di manner, following pretty chulyw of our mental vision. We are no more liable to be tell- ing the truth i dreams than we are to be acting the when we walk up the alsle of & church to play chief mourner at our own funeral A man by states of feeling that we are often perplexed to account for.” In these pathological states of mind Maudsley thinks we rightly discover the occasions of many dreams. He further says: “When the breathing is not free in sleep and the heart's action is op- pressed, as it eventually is in such case, the sleeper is apt to wake up suddenly in the greatest apprehension of some- thing terrible being about to be done to him in his dream. The natural and in- voluntary motor expression of an op- pressed heart is such action of the muscles of the face and of respiration as betokens fear and apprehension—but » “Mrs. Hutchinson heard her husband say ‘Minnie, Minnie’ in his dream, and on this slender clew she based a successful action for divorce.” the passage of food through the altmen- tary canal may indeed affect the impres- slon made upon the brain,” Maudsley ex- plains. Under the head of Musoular Sensibility the text-books give some interesting dream demonstrations. For instance, who has mnot dreamed of flying? We arise from our bed on wings of alr and float and dip about the room with ease. Out of the window we go and into the streets, where we attempt to demon- strate to our astonished friends how very easy it is to imitate the birds. Mauds- ley relates that it is reported of several holy persons that in their spiritual rap- tures, or ecstasles, they rose bodily from the earth and floated in the alr. And there can be no doubt but what some " of them felt and believed that they did. 8t. Philip Neri, 8t. Dunstan, St. Christina could hardly be held down by thelr friends. It is told of Agnes of Bohemia that when walking in her garden one day she was suddenly raised from the ground and disappeared from sight of her com- panfons, making no answer to their anxfous inquiries but a sweet and ami- able smile on her return to earth after her flight. “The explanation,” says Maudsley, “is Some of the Popular Superstiticns of the Meaning of Dreams Which Have No Scientific Basis Dream of Sheep and Fortune Dream of the Moon and You Will Be Yours. most women will admit such instances out of their own experiences. Most people are comvinced that their dreams are influenced by their state of health. The welsh rabbit, lobsters, all indigestible food is aoccused of dream meddling. Henry Maudsley in his book, The Pathology of the Mind (page 29), comments upon this of dreaming: “There are partl dreams which I from time to time, and which I feel originate in certain states of the abdominal viscera. I take it for granted here that each internal organ of the body jependently of its indirect action upon the nervous system through changes in the composition of the blood, a specific action upon the brain through its inter- Will Fall in Love, this action cannot take place in sleep, and an equally involuntary expression of the physical state is shown in the terrifying dream and in the frantic but bootless de- sire which 1is felt to escape from the threatened danger.” As several psychologists point out, & heavy and indigestible meal eaten shortly before retiring often results in dreams in which we find mountains or huge mon- sters sitting on our chests. Maudsley questions whether these dreams are the direct result of the action of the over loaded stomach upon the brain or an in direct effect of the oppression of the functions of the lungs and the heart. The troubles of indigestion seldom fail to cause troubled sleep. It is not known whether the spleen ever gives color to & dream. There is little doubt, however, that disorders of the liver and of the intestines both oocasion dreams and af- fect their character. “Every stage of Dream of Ruins and You Will Be Honored. not far to seek, A person may have a motor hallucination and imagine that he makes the movement which he does not, just as he may have a sensory hallucina- tion and imagine he sees or hears the thing he does not. We are the victims of motor hallucination when we suffer from vertigo and the room seems to turn round. These sensory disturb- ances play a vital part in the phe- nomena of dreaming.” It has been suggested that the rhythm of breathing may suggest the rhythm of fiying. Dr. Gregory dréamed of walk- ing up Mount Btna, suffering intensely from the heat, when he had a bottle of hot water applied to his feet. Aristotle mentions that ‘p‘oplo can be made to erstorms by making a slight noise in the ears when they are asleep. Alfred Maury once conducted s num- ber of tests upon to determine the influence of impressions made upon him when he was asleep. He detailed a person to make varlous experiments upon his senses without informing him in advance what he was about to do, and to wake him after each test. His nose and his lips were first tickled with a feather, He dreamed that a pitch plaster had been applied to his fdce and later torn away so violently as to bring with it the skin from his face. A pinch at the back of the neck made him dream of a blister and brought to his memory a doctor who had attended him when a child. Psychologists often have to eonsider the very common dream of a person go- ing about the streets and other public places without clothing. Most people have had this dream experience. It probably arises from a sensation of cold following an insufficiency of clothing or following the loss of bed clothing. A feverish condition followed by chill might also produce this dream effect When the skin is particularly sensitive through illness the smallest impressions may be perverted into hammer blows, attacks from wild animals, etc. ‘Maudsley, in his most interesting chap- ters on sleep and dreaming in The Path- ology of the Mind, attributes many drea: causes to cerebral circulation (page 39). When the brain is thinking, he explains, there is a more active flow of blood through it than when it is at rest, but this flow must not be too active, or sound thinking is impossible. An excessive or a defliclent flow of blood through the brain is adverse to successful thought. When these conditions are applied to the brain &t sleep we obtain interesting dream results. Nightmares which awaken one and then return again with sleep are of this nature. Local fluctuations of the circulation also may be the cause of dis- turbed dreams. It is easy to concelve, says Maudsley, that some trivial dis- order of an organ may affect temporarily, through vaso-motor nerves the circula- tion in the cerebral area in which it is represented; the particular vascular area will blush or become pale, as it were, in sympathy with the state of the organ. The quality of the blood is also an im portant factor in dreams. Lack of iron in the blood or a deficiently carbonized blood will have the same effect upon the sleeping brain as upon the waking mind. Overwork is a wellknown cause of bad dreams. Physical and nervous ex haustion affect the brain centres and react in sleep as they do when you are awake. Moral shocks disturb the brain cells and produce disordered sleep consciousness. As sclentists experiment more and more with dreams, the more we work away from the old superstitions and at taln a correct pathological reason for consciousness in sleep. The anclents tried to draw prophecy and portent and guidance from their dreams. We are be ginning to analyze and run to the doe- tor. It is a normal thing to dream—the mind goes on with its curious working when judgment drops its hand in sleep and 18 no longer at the rudder. Most dreams seem to be nothing more nor less than harmless reassociation of impres- slons flitting before us like a moving pic ture film gone mad. Those dreams which tell us of physical disorder, we are just beginning to note. They usu- ally are due to derangements following lack of physical exercise and ordinary watchfulness of the functions of elim- ination S