Sleepwalking

“ Of course you try it again after a while, you wrap your robes still better about you, you adjust your legs more carefully than before, and settling down again into your corner, think now you will surely get a good sleep. However, you hardly get to nodding fairly, before there comes a repetition of your former dismal experiences, and so the night wears on like a hideous dream. A series of unusual jolts and bumps disgusts every one with even the attempt to sleep, and presently all hands drift into a general talk or smoke. ”

“ He soon has the opportunity to observe the Lady's sleep walking for himself. She comes, in her hand a lighted candle, which at her express command must be always burning near her bed. Her eyes are open as she walks, but their sense is shut. ”

“ The matter has been under consideration ever since we were advised, early this afternoon, that you were coming. We have thought it best that you represent yourself to the doctor as a somnambulist."
"A sleep walker?"
"Precisely. It is a form of nervous trouble which is by no means infrequent. We are informed that Dr. Hartmann has treated several such cases in the past. There are not symptoms, except a state of nervousness on the part of the patient which in your case it is probable the excitement of the enterprise will supply, and, of course, the tendency to walking in the sleep. ”

“ The restlessness is allayed, and a quiet state of body and mind succeeds. It needs but a suggestion to induce him to retire for the night. After being a few minutes in bed, sleep steals over him, and his heavy breathing tells that he is in the world of dreams. ”

“ On a long ride by stage-coach you will naturally wonder how you are to sleep. For the first twenty-four hours you have a hard time of it, and your first night's sleep will be principally made up of wakefulness. But Nature will assert herself; the second night is quite comfortable, while on the succeeding nights you find yourself sleeping as well as in your bed at home, at least so far as obtaining relief from weariness is concerned. If you have never tried it you will be astonished to find how little you are fatigued after a ride of five or ten days. ”

“ As with experience all feeling of conscious effort passes, he will have a sense of letting go, the muscles will of their own accord relax, the42 quiet mind will come, especially if a pleasant thought be held steadily before it, the insomniast will stretch and yawn, take instinctively if he be in bed the sleep position, and pass off into a dreamless sleep which will indeed knit up “the ravell’d sleave of care,” and make him ready for a day of effective thinking and efficient action. ”

“ Sleep-walking is a part of reverie, or studium inane, described in Sect. XIX. In this malady the patients have only the general appearance of being asleep in respect to their inattention to the stimulus of external objects, but, like the epilepsies above described, it consists in voluntary exertions to relieve pain. The muscles are subservient to the will, as appears by the patient's walking about, and sometimes doing the common offices of life. The ideas of the mind also are obedient to the will, because their discourse is consistent, though they answer imaginary questions. ”

“ But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleep-walking. To me it has always been incomprehensible how so many men can go to bed, and lie down at their ease there, without reflecting that perhaps, in the first sleep, they may get up again as Somnambulists, and crawl over the tops of roofs and the like; awakening in some spot where they may fall in a moment and break their necks. ”

“ I got into bed, and, with the conviction that I should sleep soundly as usual till six in the morning, was soon lost in a comfortable slumber. Suddenly I was awakened, and, on raising my head to listen, I certainly heard a sound resembling the light soft tread of a lady’s footstep, accompanied with the rustling as of a silk gown. I sprang out of bed, and having lighted a candle, found that there was nothing either to be seen or heard. ”

“ Said the Englishman to Voltaire, "This was the day upon which we were to commit suicide." "Ah, yes," said Voltaire, "so we were, but to-day my bowels moved well."
4. The disturbed sleep, either as insomnia or an unrestful, dream-disturbed slumber, is a distressing symptom. For we look to the bed as a refuge from our troubles, as a sanctuary wherein is rebuilded our strength. We may link work and sleep as the two complementary functions necessary for happiness. If sleep is disturbed, so is work, and with that our purposes are threatened. ”

“ Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the drowsy phantoms of the night. ”

“ We are now at the chief problem. How is it then that the night's rest, the guarding of which is always the goal of the dream, is motorially broken through in sleep walking? There is first a special organic disposition, which is absent from no sleep walker, a heightened motor stimulability [11] . This appears clearly with children, and so for example with our patient as a tendency to convulsive attacks, pavor nocturnus and terrifying dreams, from which she starts up. ”

“ She goes to bed, but, for the first few hours, she is too much excited to sleep; toward morning, when the air is pure and invigorating, and, when to breathe it, would be to inhale health and life, she falls into a feverish slumber, and wakes not until noonday. ”

“ The leading wish may be claimed to be that the sleep walker, male or female, would climb into bed with the loved object as in childhood, which both the folk and the poet well know. The love object need not belong necessarily to the present, it can much more likely be one of earliest childhood.
Not infrequently the sleep walker identifies himself with the beloved person, sometimes even puts on his clothes, linen or outer garments, or imitates his manner to the life. ”

“ The body still responds to the impulses of the too-active brain. From the nature of his dream—as shown by chance words overheard—we may sometimes gather hints to help us to find where the elements of unrest in his daily life lie. Sleep-walking is only a further stage in this same disorder of sleep, in which the dream has become so vivid that it is translated into motor action. ”

“ And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. ”

“ And the nape of his neck bathing in cool blue watercress,
Sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under the skies,
Pale in his green bed where the light falls like rain.
Feet in the gladiolas, he is sleeping. Smiling like
A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
Nature, rock him warmly: he is cold. ”

“ Sleep we cannot call it for it was more of the nature of a waking dream than refreshing slumbers; and, after enduring two or three hours of increasing restlessness, he sprang from his couch, and, while it was yet early morn, strolled forth to refresh his fevered brain. ”

“ But when we pass on within the limits of our spectrum of waking consciousness;—when we come to control over voluntary muscles, or to sensory capacity, we find that our comparison between sleeping and waking faculty is no longer a simple one. On the one hand, there is of course a general blank and abeyance of control over the realm of waking energies;—or in partial sleep a mere fantastic parody of those energies in incoherent dream. On the other hand, we find that sleep is capable of strange developments,—and that night can sometimes suddenly outdo the most complex achievements of day. ”

“ More extended walks were in general possible only in the light of the moon, which as a heavenly body shining everywhere threw its brightness over every thing, in the court, garden and over the street, while candles or lamps at the best lighted one or two rooms. The patient, given to sleep walking or moon walking, went after the light, which meanwhile represented to her from childhood on a symbol of the parents' love and gave hope of sexual enjoyment. ”

“ Might it not be that this host of angels is descending upon the sleeping world to soothe the restless, worried ones, and smooth the puckered, aching brows in quiet slumber? Lulled by their gentle music, or the rustle of their approaching footsteps, the weary one would soon find refreshing sleep. ”

“ The stories related of sleep-walkers are, indeed, of so extraordinary a kind, that they would almost seem fictitious, were they not supported by the most incontrovertible evidence. To walk on the house-top, to scale precipices, and descend to the bottom of frightful ravines, are common exploits with the somnambulist; and he performs them with a facility far beyond the power of any man who is completely awake. ”

“ When sleep has chained down our limbs in sweet slumber, and the whole body is sunk in profound repose, yet then we seem to ourselves to be awake and to be moving our limbs, and amid the thick darkness of night we think we see the sun and the daylight ”

“ This excellent and refreshing sleep falls like a soft curtain of oblivion and saves the man's consciousness from the jar and disappointment of an anti-climax. But not only is this sleep a restorative after the strenuous efforts of the transport, it has peculiarly refreshing powers, and many men feel that after such a sleep their whole system seems rejuvenated. ”

“ He don't just lie still in bed and picture things out in his sleep, but he gets up and does the things he's dreaming about. He ain't got no limitations in it, either. Sleepwalkers is more or less common. ”

“ In the following year, he was astonished to find himself one night on the roof of the house, wet with rain; the impression which he thence conceived, produced, some time afterwards, an attack of epilepsy, followed by contraction of his fingers and toes.”
In many cases, however, there is some predeterminate motive for the walk, which excites the memory in the sleep. The somnambulist has been thinking deeply, ere he retires to rest, and the walk occurs early in the night; so that we might believe a mood of musing had really prevented sleep, and itself been the cause of the phenomena. ”

“ Sleep came, leaving the body inert and lifeless in one position for hours at a time. The open air, the sunshine, the long ride, the ever changing scenery, brought one joyous slumber, such as a healthy, happy, tired child enjoys. ”

“ I did not go to sleep. There was too much movement about; not too much to disturb sleep, but too much to disturb the peace of mind of one suspicious as myself. Feet were shuffling about, voices muttering. ”

“ The disposition to sleep-walking seems, in the opinion of this committee, to depend on a particular affection of the nerves, which both seizes and quits the patient during sleep. Under the influence of this affection, the imagination represents to him the objects that struck him while awake, with as much force as if they really affected his senses ”

“ In sleep walking a person rises from his bed in the night, apparently asleep, walks around with closed or half opened eyes, but without perceiving anything, yet performs all sorts of apparently purposeful and often quite complicated actions and gives correct answers to questions, without afterward the least knowledge of what he has said or done. If this all happens at the very time and under the influence of the full moon, it is spoken of as moon walking or being moonstruck. ”

“ The illusion may persist for some moments after waking. A lady, after breathing rather loudly and convulsively for a few seconds, wakes up, saying 'There is a rat or a mouse on the bed, shaking it up and down.' 'You were asleep,' her husband replied, 'as I knew by your breathing.' 'Oh, I was breathing like that,' she said, 'to make it jump off.' Here we see that, somewhat as in the previous cases, the dreamer's own muscular activity is, during sleep, reconstructed into the image of an external force ”

“ Where every one is a sleepy-head,
And the onlywhere to go is Bed—
Where all of us like to be.”
“Very true,” said the Bear, disconsolately, when the song was done. “But what’s the use of going to bed if you can’t sleep? You don’t know what it is”—appealing to Buddie—“to lie awake all night and listen to the servants snoring and you unable to get a wink.” ”

“ The motor outbreak during sleep, which drives one from rest in bed and results in sleep walking and wandering under the light of the moon, may be referred to this, that all sleep walkers exhibit a heightened muscular irritability and muscle erotic, the endogenous excitement of which can compensate for the giving up of the rest in bed. In accordance with this these phenomena are especially frequent in the offspring of alcoholics, epileptics, sadists and hysterics with preponderating involvement of the motor apparatus. ”

“ The motor centres can be counted on so confidently that they will drive the somnambulist with the accuracy of a trained chauffeur to his appointed destination. Sleep is, therefore, nothing more than a temporary suspension of a portion of the brain’s activity. ”

“ Sleepwalkers have been known in many countries, and treated of in medical records by their physicians, who could not only walk, and perform all ordinary acts in the dark as well as in the light, but who went on writing or reading without interruption though an opaque substance—a book or a slate—was interposed, and would dot the i’s and cross the t’s with unconscious correctness without any use of their eyes. ”