Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/422

416 may become revived and variously interpreted to the consciousness. Predormitial sensations, thoughts and movements are thus capable of inducing multiplication and diverse auto-interpretation. Dreams grow luxuriantly when the state is one of partial wakefulness. The influences of the day are then woven into fanciful pictures more or less reflecting actual life.

If sleep be profound the imagination is no longer dominated by actualities and there arises the phenomenon of a special world, that of dreams. Mental activity is really physical activity; hence we may experience consequential fatigue. At the bottom of the emotion may be found a subjective excitation of the peripheral nervous apparatus. This form of reflected life constitutes the basis of dreaming, the imagination, hallucinations, the realm of fancy. Dreams have their origin in those parts of the organism most active in the waking state, in eyes, ears, the tactile, temperature and muscular sense. The same obtains as to hallucinations in the insane. A very deep sleep does not permit of dreams, or the waking memory can not recall them, whereas in very light sleep dreams are frequent and can be remembered.

Dreams are more numerous and picturesque among intellectual people, and during certain exhaustive states, and less among those of lower mentality. The more primitive, young and intellectual the person, the more illogical, disjointed and elementary are the dreams. In old age, and profound depressive states, dreams are most rare; they serve many useful purposes. To the physician certain features of dreams possess a valuable significance. They exercise a salutary influence upon otherwise unused areas of the brain and permit the excursions, or, may be, formation, of the faculty of imagination (Manaciene). They act as a defense against the monotonies and trivialties of real life, for without them we should grow old much more rapidly (Novalis). Many writers, poets, scientists, philosophers, musicians, etc., testify to the value of dreams in piecing out their concepts, idealizations, weaving a woof of imagination invaluable to the completed thought.

It will be seen that the regulation of impaired sleep reaches back to causes most varied. Some are slight and superficial; others are due to deep-seated derangements or lesions, beginning or established. In practise, however, certain plain simple procedures usually suffice to bring about happy results. Beyond what these can accomplish, skilled medical aid should be sought and a careful search made for definite disorders, and systematic measures instituted to remove them consonant with the difficulties encountered. It is well to remember that the causes of wakefulness may be highly complex; slight factors often acting with equal forcefulness with those which theoretically should be greatest.

We are concerned in our efforts to regulate the resting period of