Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1904 — WAS SAVED FROM SUICIDE. [ARTICLE]

WAS SAVED FROM SUICIDE.

By Half a Second Sleep and the Study of Dream* While a Bell Falla. A well-known man in England bad among his ancestors a number of men and women who committed suicide. He himself became melancholy, and his children, who knew the hereditary taint, were much worried about him. A physician told him that mental fatigue was his trouble and persuaded him to try an experiment. The man was a very busy man and scoffed at the idea of taking a nap in the middle of the day. He finally agreed to the following. He would sit up in his easy chair every afternoon with his hands over his knee 9, holding a dinner bell in both his hands. If he lost consciousness and went to sleep he would be willing to sleep for so long a time as it would take for the dinner bell to fall to the floor and wake him up. The doctor who suggested this arrangement declared that the real mental going to sleep, if only for a few seconds, would suffice to save him. He invited his patient to study activity of the brain by noticing how many things he would dream while the dinner bell was falling to the floor. Every day for several months the man with the suicidal heredity eat down after luncheon with the dinner bell in his hands. Every day he went to sleep, slept for half a second, while the .bell fell to the floor, and his mental condition improved steadily, partly because of the rest which his mind got by losing consciousness for a second, and partly because of his interest in the extraordinary dreams which passed through his brain while the bell was falling. These dreams carried him all over the world, and seemed to last indefinitely. A dozen or more human beings were mixed up in them. A long succession of events, which were perfectly clear, passed before his eyes, gradr ually interrupted by a sound from a distance, which at first would mix in with the dream, and ultimately would prove to be the dinner bell striking the floor. The ordinary person who says he has been dreaming all night probably does not realize that he actually dreamed about a second and a half while he was waking up.—London World.