Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1888 — SOMNAMBULISM. [ARTICLE]

SOMNAMBULISM.

The Extraordinary Feats Performed hy Persons When Asleep. Rev. Doctor Buckley in the June Century contributes an article under the title of “Dreams, Nightmare, and Somnambulism,” from which we quote the following Somnambulism, in its simples form, is seen when persons talk in their sleep. They are plainly asleep and dreaming,, yet the connection, ordinarily broken,,, between the physical organs and the images passing through the mind is . retained or resumed in whole or in part. It is very common for children to talk moTe or less in ttieir sleep; also many persons who do not usuailv do so are liable to mutter if they have over-eaten, or are feverish or otherwise ill. Slight movements are very frequent. Many who do not fancy that they have ever -exhibited the - germs of somnambulism groan, cry out, whisper, move the hand, or foot, or head, plainly in connection with ideas passing through the mind. From these incipient manifestations of importance somnambulism reaches frightful intensity and almost inconceivable complications.

Somnamt ulists in this country have often perpetrated murders, have even killed their own children; they have carried furniture out of houses, wound up clocks, ignited conflagrations. A carpenter not long since arose in the night, went into his shop and began to file a saw; but the noise of the operation awoke him. The extraordinary feats of somnambulists in ascending to the roofs of houses, treading dangerous. places and doing many other things which they could not have done while awake have often been described, and in many cases made the subject of close investigation. Formerly it was believed by many that if they were not awakened they would in process of time return to their beds, and that there would not be any danger of serious accident happening to them. This has long been proved false. Many have fallen out of windows and been killed, and though some have skirted the brink of danger safely, the number of accidents to sleeping persons is great. Essays have been written by somnambulists. , A young lady, troubled and anxious about a prize for which she was to compete, involving the writing of an essay, arose from her bed in sleep and Wrote a paper upon a subject upon which she had not intended to write when awake; and this essay secured* for her the prize. The same person, -later in life, while asleep, selected an obnoxious paper from among several dnrmnpntH, put, it in a cup, and set fire to it. She was entirely .unaware of the transaction in the morning. Intellectual work has sometimes been done in ordinary dreams not attended by somnambulism. The composition of the “Kubla Khan.” hy- Coleridge, whih 1 ' ftsleep, and of the “Devil’s Sonata,” by Yartim, are paralleled in a small way frequently. Public speakers often dream out discourses; and there is a clergyman now residing in the western part of New York —State who, -many—years agOT areamed that he preached a powerful sermon upon a topic, and delivered that identical discourse the following Sunday with great effeet. But such eonrpositiofis -are not 1 somnambulistic unless' .accompanied by some outward action at the time. ,