"Somnambulism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a reading ticket at once, and read the books in the order I put down. Never forget to leave paper and pencil by your bedside. Leah will soon get accustomed to your quiet somnambulism; I will never trouble your rest for more than an hour or so each night, but you can make up for it by staying in bed an hour or two longer. You will have to work during the day from the pencil notes in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... might be just barely possible," I said. "If it is, it is the most remarkable case of somnambulism on record. Did you ever hear of Mr. Beasley's walking ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... utterance of sublime formulas, but finding the muscles twitch or relax in spite of belief, as prose insists on coming instead of poetry to the man who has not the divine frenzy. Fra Salvestro had a peculiar liability to visions, dependent apparently on a constitution given to somnambulism. Savonarola believed in the supernatural character of these visions, while Fra Salvestro himself had originally resisted such an interpretation of them, and had even rebuked Savonarola for his prophetic preaching: another proof, if one were wanted, that the relative greatness of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... young women outrageously deceiving the most serious investigators, who did not in the least suspect such insincerity. At market fairs there may often be seen booths where sleepwalkers are exhibited, who simulate genuine somnambulism more or less cleverly. Yet one would palpably err who should deny the existence of real magnetism, somnambulism, or hypnotic suggestion, because of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... Jessie. "I heard of a ghost once that seemed to haunt a country house, but after all it was only an old gentleman in a state of somnambulism who was hunting ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... boarders made a brief appearance at the table. One of them was of the class of people who grumble if they don't get canvasbacks and woodcocks every day, for three-fifty per week. The other was subject to somnambulism, or walking in the night, when he ought to have been asleep in his bed. In this state he walked into several of the boarders' chambers, his eyes wide open, as is usual with somnambulists, and, from some odd instinct ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... relates to pneumatology. They thought nothing of the soul as an object of science, and made no attempt to trace its connection with the brain, and the vast number of phenomena which lie along the border line between the physical and spiritual, and which are conspicuous in the phenomena of somnambulism, sleep, dreaming, hypnotism, spiritualism, clairvoyance, trance, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... allowed to the physical phenomena, the storm and darkness, the earthquake and the lightning. Ananias' death is understood as in the familiar phrase "by the visitation of God." The state of Peter in his deliverance from prison (xii. 9) is understood by reference to the phenomena of somnambulism. The "revelation" by which St. Paul went up to the Council at Jerusalem is explained in harmony with the assertion of the Acts that he was sent by the Church at Antioch, as "a thought coming into his mind, as by an inspiration, that this was the right ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Mallet. "I read in a book the other day that great talent in action—in fact the book said genius—is a kind of somnambulism. The artist performs great feats, in a dream. We must not wake him up, lest he ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... say the recital of a dream, or scenes in somnambulism, is that of Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Va. He visited Saratoga twenty years ago, well-to-do, the owner of slaves, sloops, lands, and fisheries, and visits it now upon an income of $2000 a year, derived from boiling down fish into phosphates for ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Somnambulism and Cramp. By Baron Reichenbach. Translated from the German, by John S. Hittell. New York. Calvin Blanchard. 12mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... speaks, not even a spectator. And, in the long intervals between the soft clapping of hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in the trees, and the shu-shu of sandals, lightly stirring the dust. Unto what, I ask myself, may this be likened? Unto nothing; yet it suggests some fancy of somnambulism—dreamers, who dream themselves flying, dreaming ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... negation, nothing to force him to go on. He goes on as a matter of habit: he knows not whither he is going. His powers are scattered, his consciousness is obscured. It is an awful thing for him if, just at the moment when he is most asleep, there comes a thunderclap to break in upon his somnambulism! Then he comes ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... different types. In the first case, the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder actually accepts the imaginative solution offered; it is, according to Fiorani's phrase, "somnambulism of the bladder." In the other case, there is no such somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, not arising in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and whether or not the bladder ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... inn, where he meets Amina. He gives her many pretty compliments, much to the dissatisfaction of the half-jealous Elvino, who is inclined to quarrel with the disturber of his peace of mind. Amina, who is subject to fits of somnambulism, has been mistaken for a ghost by the peasants, and they warn Rodolfo that the village is haunted. The information, however, does not disturb him, and he quietly retires to his chamber. The officious Lisa also enters, and a playful scene of flirtation ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... you are asking me these questions," he said, "for I believe that the more fully and more exactly I answer them, the better for you and the better for me. Victor Hugo, in one of his romances, speaks of the pensive somnambulism of the animals. 'Somnambulism,' sometimes pensive and sometimes playful, is the very phrase I should use in characterising your condition when you first came here and down to your recovery from that ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Philosophical Objections to the Apparition of an Abstract Spirit little understood by the Vulgar and Ignorant—The situations of excited Passion incident to Humanity, which teach Men to wish or apprehend Supernatural Apparitions—They are often presented by the Sleeping Sense—Story of Somnambulism—The Influence of Credulity contagious, so that Individuals will trust the Evidence of others in despite of their own Senses—Examples from the "Historia Verdadera" of Bernal Dias del Castillo, and from the Works of Patrick Walker—The ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... presented as recently as 1857 in an epidemic at Morzines in upper Savoy. It began with two little girls, pious and precocious, who had convulsive attacks. It spread to other children and then to adults. Amongst the younger of those affected, ecstasy, catalepsy, and somnambulism were seen, and later, convulsions only; convulsive attacks returned several times a day. An attack usually began with yawning, restless movements, the aspects of fear passing into fury with violent and impulsive movements, with vociferations and cries that they were lost souls in ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... gone to look for it at night, Mr. Drysdale?" I asked, as I wished to know whether he was aware of his somnambulism. ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... The phenomena of somnambulism, hardly perceived by Mesmer, were revealed by du Puysegur and Deleuze; but the Revolution put a stop to their discoveries and played into the hands of the scientists and scoffers. Among the small ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... what CAN be faithfully done on the Voltaire Creed; 'Realized Voltairism;'—admit it, reader, not in a too triumphant humor,—is not that pretty much the net historical product of the Eighteenth Century? The rest of its history either pure somnambulism; or a mere Controversy, to the effect, 'Realized Voltairism? How soon shall it be realized, then? Not at once, surely!' So that Friedrich and Voltaire are related, not by accident only. They are, they for want of better, the two Original Men of their Century; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... and will in torpor; the mental images being perhaps as varied and as vivid, but also as purposeless and unsystematized as the visual images in a kaleidoscope; such fantasy (often loosely called imagination) appears in dreaming, reverie, somnambulism, and intoxication. Fantasy in ordinary usage simply denotes capricious or erratic fancy, as appears in the adjective fantastic. Imagination and fancy differ from fantasy in bringing the images and their combinations ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in the middle of the night, I again fell asleep. In the morning the blizzard was still blowing, accompanied by a good deal of drift. On inquiry I found that Madigan knew nothing of his midnight escapade. It was a touch of somnambulism. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... that all is an indistinct blur of clanging street-cars, of jostling crowds. I do not know whether I had lost my senses from the physical agony I was enduring, though still able to perform the mechanical process of walking, or whether it was a case of somnambulism; but I know that I walked on, all unconscious of where I was going, or of my own identity, until I came in collision with some one, and heard a feminine voice beg my pardon. Then a little cry, and two arms were ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... should mourn. As time went by, and these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strong persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store by consecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest that pious search which had but been begun as in somnambulism. Day after day, week after week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motive edged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for the living and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... state of mind was a real disease, or I know not if it may be called a kind of somnambulism. Without doubt it was the effect of extreme lassitude, occasioned by continual ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... that Etienne Rambert is Gurn—that is to say, Fantomas! Is it not a possible hypothesis that Fantomas might have affected the mind of that lad: have suggested to him that it was he who committed the crime in a period of somnambulism: and at last have urged him to suicide? Do you not know ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... utter all sorts of screams in unearthly tones; their eyes remain fixed, sometimes bereft of all light and expression, cold and stony, and sometimes kindled into flames of passion; they would pass into the state of somnambulism, without aim or conscious direction in their movements, looking at some point, where was no apparent object of vision, with a wild, unmeaning glare. There are some indications that they had acquired the art of ventriloquism; or they so wrought upon the imaginations of the beholders, that the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... calm her, feeling rather anxious at the species of somnambulism in which she beheld her. However, the sick girl went on: "No, no, I am no worse, I am waiting. Only, you must surely see, madame, that there is no need for me to go to the Grotto this morning, since the appointment which she gave me is for four o'clock." And then the girl added ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... still asleep, present cases analogous to mine in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... insert a curious story of a monomaniac whose madness was associated with St. Paul's. Dr. Pritchard, in an essay on "Somnambulism and Animal Magnetism," in the "Cyclopaedia of Medicine," gives the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... integument sleep-walking, somnambulism hide, epidermis bird, ornithology fleshly, carnal bird, aviary hearer, auditor bee, apiary snake, serpent bending, flexible heap, aggregation wrinkle, corrugation laugh, cachinnation slow, dilatory laughable, risible lime, calcimine fear, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Unconscious Housewife wakes, and turning over her stores produces the missing impression; and when our other self wakes it finds the mislaid memorandum, so to speak, ready to its hand. Sometimes, as in the case of somnambulism, the Sub-conscious Personality stealthily endeavours to use the body and limbs, from all direct control over which it is shut out as absolutely as the inmate of a Hindu zenana is forbidden to mount the charger of her warrior spouse. But it is only when the Conscious Personality is thrown into a ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... conclusions. It seems evident, then, that all the phenomena of animal magnetism have been from an early period known to mankind under the various forms of divinatory ecstasy, demonopathy or witchmania, theomania, or fanatical religious excitation, spontaneous catalepsy, and somnambulism. That, in addition to the ordinary manifestations of insensibility to pain, rigidity, and what is called clairvoyance, the patients affected with the more intense conditions of the malady have at all times exhibited a marvellous command of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... happen that the other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed' by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollect that savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken, lest a portion of themselves should get carried off ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... reconquered itself. But still the virtual has to become actual. Without language, intelligence would probably have remained riveted to the material objects which it was interested in considering. It would have lived in a state of somnambulism, outside itself, hypnotized on its own work. Language has greatly contributed to its liberation. The word, made to pass from one thing to another, is, in fact, by nature transferable and free. It can therefore ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... bears witness to a reality of the magnetic phenomena, as he has witnessed them himself, in a case of what is called somnambulism. He dares not pronounce on the question of magnetism, as a therapeutical agent; but is disposed to think it ought, if ever, to be used with great reserve. Whether it consist of nervous phenomena of a particular order, or whether it be a product of the ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... entering, and she even came close and anchored. 'I wish,' said the old man, 'you would find out whether she is English. Perhaps they could give us a passage somewhere.' He seemed nervously anxious. So by dint of punching and kicking I started one of my men into a state of somnambulism, and giving him an oar, took another and pulled towards the lights ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... Marie Louise, who stood lonely and distraught. He felt ashamed of his word "sorry" and hoped she hadn't heard it. Silently and crudely he angled his arm, and she took it and went along with him in a somnambulism. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... journey, excursion, expedition, tour, trip, grand tour, circuit, peregrination, discursion|, ramble, pilgrimage, hajj, trek, course, ambulation[obs3], march, walk, promenade, constitutional, stroll, saunter, tramp, jog trot, turn, stalk, perambulation; noctambulation[obs3], noctambulism; somnambulism; outing, ride, drive, airing, jaunt. equitation, horsemanship, riding, manege[Fr], ride and tie; basophobia[obs3]. roving, vagrancy, pererration|; marching and countermarching; nomadism; vagabondism, vagabondage; hoboism [U.S.]; gadding; flit, flitting, migration; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... continued the pastor, thoughtfully, "certain persons have had visions of the spiritual world through the complete detachment which somnambulism produces between their external form and their inner being. 'In this state,' says Swedenborg in his treatise on Angelic Wisdom (No. 257) 'Man may rise into the region of celestial light because, his corporeal senses being abolished, the influence of heaven acts without hindrance on his inner ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... arise very early in the morning; totter down-stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. The mail sleigh takes you up and carries you on, and you reach the top of the ascent in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of some duration I awoke, and found my guard in a helpless state of somnambulism, which was so very deep I did not like to disturb her; neither could I move, as the better to guard me she was lying half over me, I, therefore, though anxious about the time we had been sleeping, decided to sit still and wait until she showed some signs of waking. ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... change in proportion as the cells of the body are renewed; rather it increases with physical unconsciousness, as in somnambulism. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... evidently in a low state, and suffering from unusual nervous excitement, thus violently to interrupt the usual tenor of his way; and, as I knew, such a state lends itself readily to the grisly practice of somnambulism. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... doubt and uncertainty assailed me. I had come as it were in spite of myself, thrust onward by an impulse I did not understand, which did not seem to be mine. What was I going to do? The proceeding suddenly appeared to me as ridiculous, tinged with the weirdness of somnambulism. I revolted, walked away, got as far as the corner and stood beside a lamp post, pretending to be waiting for a car. The street lights were reflected in perpendicular, wavy-yellow ribbons on the wet asphalt, and I stood staring with foolish intentness at this phenomenon, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... unexpected, so startling, that it partially stunned her; and, like one addicted to somnambulism, she softly crossed the room and stood behind Dr. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Preston's desk, "but I trust that in broad daylight you may see more clearly. For my part, nothing will ever convince me that that child was deceiving me; my knowledge of girls is too perfect. It was a most pronounced case of somnambulism, the outcome of last night's injudicious eating, and, in my opinion, a very alarming condition, as one can never tell to what it may lead. Her digestion may be seriously impaired. It is quite unsafe to leave her alone ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... state is a condition of mind that extends from a comparatively wakeful state, with slight drowsiness, to complete somnambulism, no two subjects, as a rule, ever ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... a room for his own use. Caleb opposed the scheme at first; but, finding that the business of changing diverted Mr. Fogo's melancholy, gave way at last, on a promise that "no May-games" should be indulged in—a festival term which was found to include somnambulism, suicide, and ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... become necessary in this "spasmodic" day to vindicate our great poet from the supposition of having written in a state of somnambulism,—to show that he was even an artist, without reference to schools. The scope of our observations is to exhibit him in that light; we wish to insist that he was a man of forethought,—that, though possessing creative genius, he did not dive recklessly into the sea ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... in his external relations, which, having been connected with the extirpated subject, are now unaccountable. About these the feeling is, I suppose, like that of a man who, when he gets over a fit of drunkenness or somnambulism, finds himself unable to account for things which he has unconsciously said or done. The immediate effect of the operation, as I intimated before, is to leave the patient very drowsy, and the first ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... our Revolutionary Sires was the political equality of white men. Let us arise from that lethargy in which we have dreamed of universal equality, and escape the dangers of that moral and intellectual somnambulism in which we have been groping to the verge of social and ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... reached the deck and took a first glance about her, Zaidie seemed suddenly to lapse into a state of somnambulism. ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... 20's Foissac persuaded the Academy of Medicine to appoint a commission to investigate the subject. After five years they presented a report. This report gave a good statement of the practical operation of magnetism, mentioning the phenomena of somnambulism, anesthesia, loss of memory, and the various other symptoms of the hypnotic state as we know it. It was thought that magnetism had a right to be considered as a therapeutic agent, and that it might be used by physicians, though others should not be allowed to practice it. In 1837 another commission ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... order was restored by the rather incongruous process of a gentleman present singing a comic song. The learned Serjeant still clings to the belief that Miss S. was in a condition of 'unconscious somnambulism.' I only hope, if ever I am arraigned before him in his judicial capacity, he will extend his benevolent credulity to me in an equal degree, and give me the benefit ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Ribot comes to the opinion which I myself venture to propound will appear from the following further quotation. After dealing with somnambulism, and saying, that if somnambulism were permanent and innate, it would be impossible to distinguish it from ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... glories, and frequently asserted itself in ungrammatical language. My window—a rear room on the ground floor—in this way derived blended light and shadow from the court. So low was the window-sill that, had I been the least disposed to somnambulism, it would have broken out under such favorable auspices, and I should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations as to the origin of the court were not altogether gratuitous, for by means of this window I once saw the Past, as through a glass ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... in ungrammatical language. My window—a rear room on the ground floor—in this way derived blended light and shadow from the court. So low was the window-sill, that had I been the least predisposed to somnambulism, it would have broken out under such favorable auspices, and I should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations as to the origin of the court were not altogether gratuitous, for by means of this window ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... her whole system. Afterwards, no address was made to her on any subject when in her sleep-waking state. She was left to lie unheeded. I pursued a homoeopathic treatment of her case. But the medicines constantly produced effects opposite to what I expected. She now suffered less from spasm and somnambulism, but with increasing marks of weakness and decay. All seemed as if the end of her sufferings drew near. It was too late for the means I wished to use. Affected so variously and powerfully by magnetic means in the first years of her illness, she had now no life more, so thoroughly ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... account of the fearful night that she had passed, with an interest that held me breathless to the end. A terrible dream, which had impressed a sense of its reality on the sleeper by reaching its climax in somnambulism—this was the obvious explanation, no doubt; and a rational mind would not hesitate to accept it. But a rational mind is not a universal gift, even in a country which prides itself on the idol-worship of Fact. Those good friends ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... other illness, it not unfrequently happens that sick persons can accurately foretell the day of an approaching attack and how long it will last. The same thing occurs almost invariably in the case of spontaneous, and generally in that of artificial, somnambulism; certainly the Pythia, as is well known, used to announce the date of her next ecstatic state. In like manner the curative instinct displays itself in somnambulists, and they have been known to select remedies that have been no less remarkable for the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... insanity. It also kills ambition and creates hopeless, indifferent persons. Therefore, made wiser by psychology we realize the importance of stirring the mind out of a fixed rut, or rather a stupidity that verges on somnambulism, and keeping it alert and active. Sheep growers, for example, try in every way to divert the minds of their shepherds lest the continual watching of a slowly moving flock paralyze their minds ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... certain occult powers of the mind, with which the newly discovered action of magnetism seemed to him to be connected. At first, his ideas on the subject were a good deal mixed. When, in 1832, a terrible epidemic of cholera was spreading its ravages, he wrote to Doctor Chapelain, suggesting that somnambulism—he would have called it hypnotism to-day—should be employed to seek out the causes of the malady, and a test applied to prove whether its virtues were real or chimerical. In 1834, he had come to pin his faith to the healing powers of magnetism. "When you or Monsieur Hanski or Anna ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... was a matter of somnambulism, all points of it were easily fitted by the doctor, who quickly understood that the knife had been taken by the poor girl in her sleep just as it had been murderously used. What horrible demon governed her in her slumber, ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... rising sun, And lo the reign of Reason is begun. Fantastic phantasms fly before the light— Pale, gibbering ghosts and ghouls and goblin fears: Man who hath walked in sleep—what thousands years? Groping among the shadows of the night, Moon-struck and in a weird somnambulism, Mumbling some cunning cant or catechism, Thrilled by the electric magic of the skies— Sun-touched by Truth—awakes and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... rage, of malediction. This transformation of his wife, so refined, so self-contained, into a creature possessed by an almost animal fury, struck Ian with horror, although he accepted it as a phenomenon of somnambulism. He approached but did not touch her, for he had heard that it was dangerous to awaken a somnambulist. Her voice sank rapidly to a loud whisper and he heard her articulate—"My husband! Mine! Mine!"—but in no tone of tenderness, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that of Isis; its Grecian, the Pythagorean doctrines. All these three, however, were much mingled with each other. The Roman legions, who really no longer had any native country, bore these artificial religions throughout the whole world. The confusion of excitement led often to Somnambulism, which was not yet understood, and to belief in miracles. Apollonius of Tyana, the messiah of Ethnicism, is the principal figure in this group; and, in comparison with him, Jamblichus appears only as an enthusiast and Alexander of Abonoteichos as ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... prescribed for herself nettle-broth; at the third, catnip. The crises became mitigated, then disappeared. It was truly a miracle. The nasal addigitation did not succeed with the others, and, in order to bring on somnambulism, they projected the construction of a mesmeric tub. Pecuchet already had even collected the filings and cleaned a score of bottles, when ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... bed several hours too late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. The consequence was a premature development of the brain, that made me a "youthful prodigy" by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while, later, they induced continual headache, weakness and nervous affections, of all kinds. As these again ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the Doctor slowly. "I did have a pupil once who was troubled with somnambulism. He used to walk into the next dormitory and scare the other boys.—Oh, but this ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... an affection produced by hysteria, during which the patient's body becomes rigid. It is claimed by some that somnambulism is one phase of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... well-to-do tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects of Socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky, or he had been murdered by his Mahatma or victimised by Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great point was—Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric current scoured the civilised world in search of her. What wonder if the shrewder sort divined that the indomitable ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... endowment, of what the mind can assimilate and turn to account. There are many kinds of the poetic temper, the intellectual element blending variously with the emotional, the instinctive and the visional. For Schiller poetry was not 'somnambulism', but a very deliberate process; wherefore it was quite natural for him to expect that a season of philosophic study would be good for him. So he set out to fathom the laws of beauty; assuming, of course, that there must be such laws and that they must be, in some ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... parturition. Depaul mentions a woman who fell in a public street and was delivered of a living child during a syncope which lasted four hours. Epley reports painless labor in a patient with paraplegia. Fahnestock speaks of the case of a woman who was delivered of a son while in a state of artificial somnambulism, without pain to herself or injury to the child. Among others mentioning painless or unconscious labor are Behrens (during profound sleep), Eger, Tempel, Panis, Agnoia, Blanckmeister, Whitehill, Gillette, Mattei, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... perforce with half an eye the procession of thoughts and images over which it has lost control. For it is the duty of Consciousness to control the stream sent up by Sub-Consciousness. When it is awake but unable to do this, we have Insanity; when asleep, Dreams. In Somnambulism the Working Sub-Consciousness is seen in an accentuated phase. It does all the work of its little brother, even to exercising its owner's muscles. To be "possessed" by a popular song is a species of insanity—Consciousness ridden by ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... perfectly ready for anything in the way of a practical joke, especially if it were a new variety. The girls had grown rather tired of apple-pie beds or sewn-up nightdress sleeves, but nobody had yet thought of somnambulism. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... personal and professional convenience. But the White Linen Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to—accommodate you—sir,—and if June doesn't accommodate you—I'd rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And it sails June second." Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulism case'!" ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... during sleep, from whence I suppose they have been thought to have some connection with sleep, and have thence been termed Somnambulism; but their commencement during sleep is owing to our increased excitability by internal sensations at that time, as explained in Sect. XVIII. 14. and 15., and not to any similitude between ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... father in a low voice to the prelate, while Rodin continued to write, "I am quite confounded. I read—I see—and yet I can hardly believe my eyes. Just before, exhausted and dying—and now with his mind as clear and penetrating as ever. Can this be one of the phenomena of somnambulism, in which the mind alone governs and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... as he would have done to a natural somnambulist. He did so, and the man replied with much clearness and precision. M. de Puysegur was agreeably surprised: he continued his experiments, and found that, in this state of magnetic somnambulism, the soul of the sleeper was enlarged, and brought into more intimate communion with all nature, and more especially with him, M. de Puysegur. He found that all further manipulations were unnecessary; that, without speaking or making any sign, he could convey his will ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... how Mrs Perch had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch) moaning in his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and ninepence in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey's face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, 'Might I make so bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?' and how Mr Dombey had replied, 'My faithful Perch—but no, it cannot be!' and with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... mesmeric influence there is a great gulf, and I don't feel inclined to cross this gulf on the grounds of blind faith. It is perfectly possible that there are instances of thought-transference in cases of somnambulism, epilepsy, trance. I do not positively deny it, though I am very doubtful. Mediums and clairvoyants are a sickly lot, as a rule. But I bet you anything, a healthy man in perfectly normal conditions is not to be influenced by the tricks ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... humbly beg to propose, That those savans who mean, as the rumor goes, To sit on Miss Okey's wonderful case, Should also Lord Parry's case embrace; And inform us, in both these patients' states, Which ism it is that predominates, Whether magnetism and somnambulism, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... senses while closed against ordinary external impressions is, indeed, marvelous. Less to account for this mysterious state of being, than to arrange such a series of facts as may help further inquiry into the subject, we have assembled several curious circumstances regarding somnambulism. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... not violently upon man, leave him alone in his somnambulism, and he kicks out from under his feet the ladder of life up which he has climbed, constitutes himself the centre of the universe, dreams sordidly about his own particular god, and maunders metaphysically about his own ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... superabundantly confirmed by investigation concerning the unknown faculties of the soul, when active in dreams and somnambulism. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller |
