On the relation of sleep to convulsive affections / by William Frederick Barlow.

  • Barlow, W. F. (William Frederick), 1817-1853.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relation of sleep to convulsive affections / by William Frederick Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    was resting profoundly, I examined the hand as it lay by her side; not a muscle quivered; but shortly afterwards the slumber became manifestly imperfect, and then the hand and arm, influenced as it seemed by the emotion of dream- ing, shook very forcibly. On a subsequent night I watched more minutely, and for a longer time. In calm sleep the hand lay in perfect rest, but anything which disturbed the repose served also to renew the tremblings. When it be- came very violent, she occasionally seemed about to awake, and even performed a voluntary act or two, and made a kind of complaining noise, as though annoyed by something; but instead of arousing completely, she relapsed gradually into her former complete unconsciousness, the slow subsiding of the tremors well marking its return. And so she would lie, without any movement of the voluntary muscles, the arm participating in the perfect quiet, until a noise partly dis- composed her and renewed the tremors, which it was in- teresting to note, were frequently the only sign whatever of some degree of mental activity. There are some cases of hemiplegia wherein, though the will be powerless, intense passion violently convulses the affected parts; it may be well supposed that these are not a whit less amenable to the excitement of a dream than to the agitation of the waking state. It is very probable that chorea, epilepsy, and other forms of convulsive action, are at times first excited by the emotion of dreaming; and that this is one reason why their immediate origin is not seldom involved in so much obscurity. IV. Of the withdrawal of Volition.—There are a variety of considerations all tending to show that the withdrawal of the will in time of sleep must predispose greatly to con- vulsive actions. Almost all the experiments which demonstrate and illustrate the reflex function are of necessity performed after the removal of the seat of volition; and it now seems strange that those movements should ever have been called voluntary which cannot be excited until volition is withdrawn.