The Philosophy of Mystery · 24 of 35

Influence of Dark Blood in the Brain

“I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain.”

Romeo and Juliet.

Ev. That I may explain to you the predisposition of a dream,—in other words, the state of broken slumber,—it is essential that I recur to the physiology of the brain; and I must humble our pride, by combining some of the debasing conditions of our nature, as influential on the divine mind, through the medium of its chambers of marrow; for to the intimate condition and function of the brain and its nerves, and its contained blood, we must chiefly look for elucidation of the physical causes of a dream.

Yet I may even grant you, for an argument, Astrophel, the flight of an immortal spirit, and all the amiable vagaries of Sir Thomas Brown; reserving to myself to prove at what moment we become conscious of this flight.

In natural actions, there are ever three requisites, like the points of a syllogism:

1.A susceptibility of influence;

2.The influence itself;

3.The effect of this influence:

And these I call the predisposing, the exciting, and the proximate causes.

1.The brain is brought to this susceptibility by excited temperament, study, intense and undivided thought; in short, by any intense impression.

2.The influence or excitement is applied; congestion of blood producing impression on extremities, or origin of a nerve, at the period of departing or returning consciousness. At these periods, the blood changes, and I believe, as it changes, the phenomena of mind, as in the waking state, obey these changes:—rational and light dreams being the effect of circulation of scarlet blood; dull and reasonless visions and “night-mare,” that of crimson, or black blood.

3.The effect of this influence is recurrence of idea, memory,—more or less erroneously associated, as the blood approximates to the black or scarlet state, or as the brain itself is constituted.

Now it is essential to the perfect function of the brain, not only that it shall have a due supply of blood, but that this blood shall be of that quality we term oxygenated. If there be a simple deficiency of this scarlet blood, a state of sound undisturbed sleep will ensue (slightly analogous to the condition of syncope, or fainting). This may be the consequence of any indirect impression, or the natural indication of that direct debility, which we witness in early infancy, and in the “second childishness and mere oblivion” of old age. But this deficiency of arterial blood may be depending on a more positive cause, venous congestion, impeding its flow; for in sleep, the breathing being slower, the blood becomes essentially darker. Even arterial blood itself will become to a certain degree carbonized, by lentor, or stagnation. Venous congestion and diminution of arterial circulation are not incompatible; indeed, Dr. Abercrombie reasons very ably on their relative nature, implying the necessity of some remora of venous circulation to supply that want or vacuum which the brain would otherwise experience from the deficiency of the current in the arterial system. Thus will the languid arterial circulation of the brain, which causes sleep in the first instance, produce, secondarily, that congestion of blood in the veins and sinuses, which shall reduce it to disturbed slumber, and excite the dream. May we not account, on this principle, for the difficulty which many persons experience in falling into a second slumber, when they have been disturbed in the first?

Ida. Combe, I believe, observed, through a hole in a fractured skull, that the brain was elevated during an apparent dream.

Ev. This is a matter of frequent observation with us. There was, in 1821, at Montpelier, a woman who had lost part of the skull, and the brain and its membranes lay bare. When she was in deep sleep, the brain lay in the skull almost motionless; when she was dreaming, it became elevated; and when her dreams (proved by her relating them when awake) were on vivid or animating subjects, but especially when she was awake, the brain was protruded through the cranial aperture.

Blumenbach states that he, himself, witnessed in one person a sinking of the brain, whenever he was asleep, and a swelling with blood when he awoke. David Hartley, therefore, may be half right and half wrong when he imputes dreams to an impediment to the flow of blood, a collapse of the ventricles, and a diminished quantity of their contained serum.

We thus have not only a deficiency of proper stimulus, but a deleterious condition of the blood, which acts as a poison to the brain. In fatal cases of coma and delirium, we observe deep red points, chiefly in the cineritious part of the brain, from this congestion of its vessels. Sound sleep is thus prevented, but the congestion of carbonized blood acting as a sort of narcotic, depresses the energy of the brain so far as to prevent waking, inducing that middle state, drowsiness or slumber; so that sleep may thus depend on congestion from exhaustion; and “spectral illusion” from congestion in that state short of slumber; and insanity itself from congestion still more copious and permanent.

From this results a disturbed condition of the brain; it is irritated, not excited, by its healthy or proper stimulus; and it follows that such derangement of the manifestations of mind ensues as we term a dream. Waking, however, soon takes place, and the blood is more scarlet, and the faculties themselves gradually awake. As this is more perfect, we remember the dream, and are enabled to explain it, and know that it was a dream. The mind is now restored, so that scarlet blood indicates healthy thought, and black blood its reverse. Your pardon for this prolixity and dulness. The healthy or unhealthy crisis of the blood is a most important subject in our argument, and too constantly slighted in the question of illusion.

Monsieur Denis records the story of a young man of Paris, in the 17th century, who was cured of a stubborn and protracted lethargy, by the transfusion of the arterial blood of a lamb; and another of a recovery from madness, by that of the arterial blood of a calf, and these in presence of men both of science and high quality.

I do not affirm my implicit faith in this statement, of the effect of gentle blood, but I am certain of the poisonous influence of that of another quality; and I will cite a passage from Hoffman, the German poet, whom Monsieur Poupon, in his “Illustrations of Phrenology,” adduces as a specimen of marvellousness, ere I offer my cases.

“Why do my thoughts, whether I am awake or asleep, always tend, in spite of all my efforts, to the gloomy subject of insanity? It seems to me as if I felt my disordered ideas escaping from my mind, like hot blood from a wounded vein.”

This was figurative, but it was true; for of itself this black blood may be suddenly the cause of furious and fatal mania. When Dionis, in his “Cours d’Opérations de Chirurgie,” is referring to that operation that has lately, by its revival, occupied so much of the attention of the medical world (the process of transfusion ) he says: “La fin funeste de ces malheureuses victimes de la nouveauté, detruisit, en un jour, les hautes idées qu’ils avoient conçues; ils devinrent foux, furieux, et moururent ensuite.”

The relief of the brain, by the escape of this blood, is of deeper interest to science than the mere romancer may imagine.

Sir Samuel Romilly was for a moment, I believe, in a state of sanity, when blood had flowed from the divided vessels of his throat; for he attempted, it appeared, to stop its flow by thrusting the towel with some force into the wound.

So diseases of the heart, by keeping the black blood in the brain, predispose to dreaming. During the age of terror in France, organic diseases of the heart and cases of mania were most prevalent.

I may for a moment indulge in analogies regarding this arrest of the blood. Cases of inflammation of the ear are often seen in confirmed maniacs (the helix being usually the part most inflamed), and black blood often oozes from the part.

M. Calmeil considers chronic phlegmasia of the brain as the cause of insanity, the derangement itself being, as it were, the moral result or disease, and the organic changes or proximate cause the physical disease; both being but the sequelæ, or consequence of inflammation.

A boy, the servant of a medical friend (Mr. A——), was, some years ago, placed under my care for fever, with delirium. About the acme of his disorder the impetuosity of the blood in the vessels of the head was such as to project his ears prominently forwards, like those of a satyr, or, as the gossips thought, rather of a demon. Yet all this subsided as the fever waned.

Yet, believe me, I draw a decided distinction between mania and dreaming; though the phenomena may sometimes bear resemblance. In one essential point they differ; that the transient illusion is not manifested, except during slumber, or a state closely analogous to it, when the senses are languid, or asleep. It is true, however, the maniac will, on his recovery, often dream of the subject of his insanity, yet insanity is more exemplified by action, the dream being usually passive.

The predisposition to insanity is often, too, hereditary, so that the slightest moral influence, imperceptible perhaps to the physician, may incite such a mind to madness; for where there is no predisposition, that is, a perfect integrity of brain, a right judgment is evinced even under the potent influence of the passions.

As the condition of insanity, so the illusive vision, does not always primarily depend on medullary disease; there are primary moral as well as physical causes. But even the exertion of thought, which the ultra spiritualist may term an immaterial faculty, is attended by increased action on the matter of the brain. The organ of mind will, if diseased, (though not always,) produce deranged actions. Yet it is equally true, if even a sound brain be badly instructed, and its passion uncontrolled, insanity may ensue; not however without quickly, I believe immediately, inducing structural change.

On one point, the dream and insanity are often alike; they are mental fulfilments of a wish: and the dreamer, during his slumber, and the madman throughout his derangement, are presented with the spectra of their desires, and their hopes and fears become, for these periods, reality.

It was with a reference to the wanderings of the understanding in dreams, that Sir James Mackintosh thus writes in a letter to Robert Hall:

“These will familiarise your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep and dreams, and, in process of time, they will cease to appear to you much more horrible.”

Astr. And pray, Evelyn, how doth all this profound prosing affect the subject of dreams?

Ev. By similitude. I may even remind you with devout veneration, of the dreams of a prophet, to prove the brain highly sensitive when these visions are before it. Listen to the words of Daniel, to whom “God gave knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.”

“I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit, in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.”

“And I, Daniel, fainted and was sick certain days.”

Even here, may we not believe, that the Creator did not alter his law?

It was Dr. Cullen who first drew a parallel between insanity and dreams. As some proof of his insight, we read in Lode of a man who never dreamed until he fell into a fever in the twenty-fifth year;—in Beattie, of a young friend who never dreamt unless his health was deranged.

And Mr. Locke thus writes: “I once knew a man who was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me that he had never dreamed in his life until he had fever.”

This immunity from dreams is also most marked in savages, unless during disorder or at the dying moment. Ulloa, Humboldt, and La Condamine, all agree as to the character of indolence and absence of thought and fancy in the native Americans, and it is as sure that they seldom dream.

Now whatever influence tends to arrest or derange the upper circulation of the blood in its return to the heart, or to detain it in the vessels of the brain, or which presses on an important nerve, so as to disturb the function of the brain or spinal cord, by continuous sympathy, may be the remote cause of the phenomena of dreaming.

Such are the results of repletion, dyspepsia, the supine position, &c. &c.

And here, Astrophel, I meet your metaphysician.

Galen, and indeed the ancients generally, attributed dreams chiefly to indigestion; but referred their immediate excitement to fumes and vapours, instead of to nervous influence, or cerebral congestion from interrupted circulation.

Cast. And here, Evelyn, courtesy might have prompted you to meet my poets. Let me see, is it not Dryden who writes of —

“——rising fumes of undigested food,

And noxious humours that disturb the blood?”

And in a poem believed to have been written by Chaucer, there is this passage: can I remember his quaintness?

“I supposed yt to have been some noxiall fantasy,

As fallyth in dremes, in parties of the nyght,

Which cometh of joy or grievous malady;

Or of robuste metes which causeth grete myght;

Overmoche replet obscuryth the syght

Of natural reasonne, and causyth idyll thowght,

Makyth the body hevy where hyt was lyght.”

And again, in the tale of the “Nonnes Preest:”

“Swevenes (dreams) engendren of repletions,

And oft of fume and of complexions,

When humours ben to habundant in a wight.

Of other humours cou’d I telle also,

That werken many a man in slepe moch wo,” &c.

Ev. I sit reproved, fair lady. Herodotus also says, the Atlantes never dream; which Montaigne refers to their never eating anything which has died of itself. And Burton thus sums up his precepts of prevention:

“Against fearful and troublesome dreams, incubus, and inconveniences wherewith melancholy men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper and of such meats as are easie of digestion, no hare, venison, beef, &c.; not to lie on his back,” &c.

Dryden, to ensure his brilliant visions of poesy, ate raw flesh; and Mrs. Radcliffe, I am told, adopted the same plan. We know that green tea and coffee, if we do sleep, induce dreaming; and Baptista Porta, for procuring quiet rest and pleasing dreams, swallowed horse-tongue after supper.

Indigestion, and that condition which is termed a weak or irritable stomach, constitute a most fruitful source of visions. The immediate or direct influence of repletion, in totally altering the sensations and the disposition in waking moments, is a proof of its power to derange the circulation of the brain and the mental faculties in sleep.

“Somnus ut sit levis, sit tibi cœna brevis.”

The influence of the great sympathetic nerve in this respect is very important. With many persons, a meal is usually followed by feelings of depression, impaired memory, unusual timidity, despondency, and other illusive characteristics of hysteria and hypochondriasis. And events will appear of the greatest moment, which, after the lapse of some hours, will be considered mere trifles. So that, after all, there is some truth in the idea of that archæus, or great spirit, asserted, by Van Helmont, to sit at the cardia of the stomach, and regulate almost all the other organs.

The posture of supination will unavoidably induce that increased flow of blood to the brain which, under certain states of this fluid, is so essential to the production of brilliant waking thoughts; an end, indeed, attained so often by another mode—the swallowing of opium.

A gentleman of high attainment was constantly haunted by a spectre when he retired to rest, which seemed to attempt his life. When he raised himself in bed, the phantom vanished, but reappeared as he resumed the recumbent posture.

Some persons always retire to bed when they wish to think; and it is well known that Pope was often wont to ring for pens, ink, and paper, in the night, at Lord Bolingbroke’s, that he might record, ere it was lost, that most sublime or fanciful poesy which flashed through his brain as he lay in bed. Such, also, was the propensity of Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who (according to Cibber, or rather Sheil, the real author of the “Lives of the Poets”) “kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her grace lay, and were ready, at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night to write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory.”

Henricus ab Heeres (in his “Obs. Med.”) says, that when he was a professor, he used to rise in the night, open his desk, compose much, shut his desk, and again to bed. On his waking he was conscious of nothing but the happy result of his compositions.

The engineer, Brindley, even retired to bed for a day or two, when he was reflecting on a grand or scientific project.

I deny not that the darkness or stillness of night may have had some influence during this inspiration. I may also allow that some few individuals compose best while they are walking; but this peripatetic exertion is calculated, itself, to produce what we term determination of blood to the head. I have heard of a most remarkable instance of the power of position in influencing mental energy, in a German student, who was accustomed to study and compose with his head on the ground and his feet elevated, and resting against the wall.

And this is the fragment of a passage from Tissot, on the subject of monomania:

——“Nous avons vu étudier dans cette académie il n’y a pas long-temps, un jeune homme de mérite, qui s’étant mis dans la tête, de découvrir la quadrature du circle, est mort, fou, à l’hôtel Dieu, à Paris.”

You will smile when I tell you that the tints of the landscape are brighter to our eyes if we reverse the position of the head.

And now, with your leave, gentle ladies, I will bring phrenology to my aid.

If we assume that there may be distinct portions of the brain, organs of comparison, individuality, causality, &c., we naturally regard them as the source of that combined faculty which we denominate judgment. We might argue, that if these organs were permanently deficient, fatuity, or, at least, extreme folly, would be the result. By parity of reasoning we might infer, that if the function of such organs were for a time suspended, imagination, having lost its mentor, would, as it were, run wild, and an extravagant dream, granting an excitement, would be the result. If the organ of colour be excited, and form be asleep, we may have an eccentric drawing. If language and imagination are both awake, a poem or romance; so it may chance, that if all the proper organs are awake, there may be a rational dream.

I yield not to the too finely-spun hypotheses of Gall, and his first whimsical topography of the cranium; the incipient idea of which, by the by, he owes to the Arabian phrenologists who, even in the olden time, had glimpses, although they decided on a different location. Imagination was in the frontal region, reason in the medial, and memory in the occipital.

In Dr. Spurzheim’s beautiful demonstration of the brain, he exhibits it almost as one large convoluted web. While the ultra-phrenologist is unravelling these convolutions, it is strange that he sees not the inconsistency of his cranial divisions. Some of the boundary lines of his organs must be drawn across these convolutions. It will ever be impossible to decide the exact course of these, but the lines should be drawn in the direction of their fibres; for if the faculty be seated in one convolution, that faculty would proceed in the course of its fibres, and not across the fissure from one lobule to another. Now the most frequent coincidence of the possession of great mental power, with full development of the frontal region of the skull, will naturally lead us to believe that it may depend on causation. Indeed a skull, as well as expression, may be phrenologically changed by culture or thought. The skull of William Godwin, in early life, indicated an intellectual development; then it became sensual, the occipital organs being in excess; and again, as his mind was subject to more moral culture, the intellectual or frontal again prevailed. I am informed, also, by Miss A——, that there was observed a progressive development of the intellectual region in the head of her father, an acute and deep thinker.

We have analogies to this in physiognomy. Caspar Hauser lost some of the negro fulness about his mouth after he had been introduced to society. Perhaps the contrasted beauty and deformity in the forehead and eye, and in the mouth of Sheridan, was a faithful indication of that paradox of mind which was never more perfectly displayed than in the intellectual dignity and moral deficiency of this man. As no function, then, either of brain or gland, can be carried on without a due supply of blood, it will follow that position may materially influence the integrity of these functions. The seat of the organs I have alluded to, if cranial development supports me, may be determined on the fore part of the head, behind the os frontis, portions of the cerebral mass which, in the supine position, are usually most elevated above the centre of circulation. “The more noble the faculties, the higher are the organs situated.” These, consequently, may endure a deficiency of stimulus, in comparison with other organs more favourably situated. The phrenologist, then, will endeavour to prove, that the supine position generally produces vascular pressure on particular parts or organs of the encephalon; and he will argue that dreams arise from individual organs abstractedly or unconnectedly acting. There is one spot on the cranium, indeed, identified by Dr. Spurzheim as a most important item in the composition of a good dreamer. He tells us, that “persons who have the part above and a little behind the organ of ideality developed, are much prone to mysticism, to see visions and ghosts, and to dream.”

It may not be difficult to believe in this partial function of the brain, when we recollect how often the loss of one faculty will be connected with paralytic disorders. The faculty of perception may be lost, unless the impression on the mind is made through a particular sense. Thus patients may be unable to comprehend that name or subject when it was pronounced, or related, which they will immediately do, if written down and presented to the sight,— the optic nerve may transmit while the auditory has lost its power.

“Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,

Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.”

Of this axiom there is an illustrative story, by Darwin, in his “Zoonomia.”—A paralytic man could see and hear, but the mind was conscious of vision only. If the hour of breakfast were named to him, he repeated it and was passive; but if the hour were pointed out on the watch, he comprehended at once, and called for breakfast.

On the contrary, there may be the same imperfection of outward transmission; the lingual nerves, influencing the tongue to sound a name inapplicable to the idea, the person often reversing the names of articles which he is continually using.

These phenomena regarding nerves of sense, then, are strictly analogous to those which we recognize in those parts of the brain which are intimately connected with, or influenced by, these nerves of sense: thus in analogy to waking illusions, we have the imperfect associations of a dream when the organs are irregularly acted on.