WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1213, 31 May 1895, Page 27

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

In a recent lecture at the Eoyal Institu-* tion, Dr B< W. Richardson says that the sleep of health is dreamless. "Dreams/* says Shakespeare, " are children of an idle brain." If both the doctor and the poet are right it follows that idle brains are unhealthy brains. No doubt there might be truth in thg inference, but that is not quite the point. Are all dreams signs of a diseased condition F To- this the doctor says " No." He divides dreams . into two classes ; those started by noises or other causes outside the sleeper, and those produced by pain, fever or indigestion. Here we inject a fact. We receive! multitudes of letters containing tlis affirmation, almost in identical words: .'•'* I was worse tired in the morning than when I went to bed." To this the doctor has an answer. He says, " When we feel wearied. in the morning very likely it results from dreams that we have forgotten." Quite so. In other words there is a bodily condition which may prevent a person from working by day at his usual calling, but obliges him to labour all night under a mental stimulus of which he knowfj nothing save by its resulting exhaustion. These unhappy wretches toil harder, therefore, for no compensation, when they are ill, than they have to do to earn a living when they are well. What ait infernal and frightful fact ! And this toq without taking into account their physical suffering at all times. "Night," said Coleridge, " is my hell."

From one of the letters referred to we quote what a woman says of her daughter: " She was worse tired in a morning than, when she went to bed." Poor girl! Those " forgotten dreams " had tossed her about as a ship is tossed in a tempest. Night was her day of labour. The mother's simple tale is this: "la June, 1890, my daughter Ann Elizabeth, became low, weak and fretful, and complained of pain in the chest after eating. Next her stomach was so irritable that she vomited all the food she took. It was awful to see her heave and strain. For three weeks nothing passed through her stomach, except a little soda water and lime water. Later on, her feet and legs began, to swell and puff from dropsy. She was now pale as death and looked as though she had not a drop of blood in her and was always cold. Month after montH. dragged by and she got weaker every day* She could not walk without support, for she had lost the proper use of her legs, and her body swayed from side to side as shemoved. "A doctor attended her for twelve months, and finally said it was no use giving any more medicine, as it would do*. - no good. In May, 1891, I took her to the Dewsbury Infirmary. She got no betterthere, and I thought I was surely goicg to> lose her. She was then thirteen years of age.

" One day a lady (Mrs Lightoiier) called at my shop, and seeing how badl my daughter was spoke of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syiiip, and persuaded us to try it. I got a bottler from the Thornhill Lees Co - operative Stores, and she began taking it. In two> days she found a little relief ; the sickness was not so frequent. She kept on with, the Syrup and steadily improved. Soon, she was strong as ever, and has since been, in the best of health, and can take any kind of food. After she had taken, the Syrup only two weeks the neighbours were surprised at her improved appearance, and I told them what had brought it about—that Seigel's Syrup had done what the doctors could not do, it. saved her life. Yours truly (Signed), (Mrs) Sabah Ann Sheard, 19, Brewery lane, Thornhill Lees, near Dewsbury, October 11th, 1892."

I'he inciting cause of this young girl's T)itiful suffering was indigestion and dyspepsia, dropsy being one of its most dangerous symptoms. It attacks both youth and age, its fearful and often fatal results being due to the fact that physicians usually treat the symptoms instead of the disease itself. "A child's diearns," says Dr Richardson, "are signs of disturbed health, and should be regarded with anxiety." The same is true of the dreams of older people. They mean poison in the stomach, and point to the immediate use of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup.