Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/248

236 of the Isthmus of Darien in 1854, many of the members of which perished slowly and horribly from sheer hunger (thirst not being a factor in this case). The following paragraph is given as an illustration:

"From the time that food became scarce to the close, and just in proportion as famine increased, they did not gloat over visions of homely fare, but reveled in gorgeous dinners. So strangely and strongly did this whim get possession of their minds, that the hour of halting, when they could indulge undisturbed in these rich reveries, became an object of the deepest interest. While, hewing their way through the jungles, and wearied and over-come, they were ready to sink, they would cheer each other up by saying, 'Never mind, when we go into camp we'll have a splendid supper,' meaning, of course, the imaginary one they designed to enjoy. Truxton and Maury would pass hours in spreading tables loaded with every luxury they had ever seen or heard of. Over this imaginary feast they would gloat with the pleasure of a gourmand, apparently never perceiving the incongruity of the thing. They would talk this over while within hearing of the moans of the men, and on one occasion discussed the propriety of giving up in future all stimulating drink, as they had been informed it weakened the appetite. As hereafter they designed, if they ever got out, to devote themselves entirely and exclusively for the rest of their lives to eating, they soberly concluded that it would be wrong to do anything to lessen its pleasures or amount."

"Absence of mind," of the results of which such remarkable stories are current, must be cited also as an example of a transient waking dream or species of reverie state.

Under the next head a few words may first be expended upon the class of lethargies or comatose sleeps arising from certain diseases, such as apolexies, epilepsy, paralysis, catalepsy, etc. These have but remote analogies with natural sleep. In most of them the brain, instead of being in the collapsed condition, partly drained of blood, which occurs in real sleep, is overloaded and congested with blood, and the resulting stupor is mostly absolute and dreamless. Syncope or fainting has one point of analogy with sleep—namely, that it is accompanied by cephalic anæmia, or loss of blood from the brain; but this goes so much further than in sleep, and the other symptoms, of decrease of general circulation and of respiration, are so great, that there is no further analogy. The insensibility of every sort during syncope is often absolute. Paralysis may in some forms be regarded as a