WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXII, Issue 1, 3 May 1895, Page 9

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

In a recent lecture at the Boyal Institution, Dr B. W, Bichardaon says that the sleep of health is dreamless. " Dreams," Bays Shakespeare, " are children of an idle brain." If both the doctor and the poet ere right it follows that idle brainß are unhealthy bra'os. No doubt there might be truth in the inference, bat that ia not quite the point. Are all dreams signs of a diseased condition 1 To tbii the doctor says " No." He divides dreams into two classes ; those started by noises or other can see outside the sleeper, and those produced by pain, fever, or indig stion. Here we inject a fact. We receive multitudes of letters containing this affirmation, almost in identical words : " / mat morte 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 me have forgotten," Quite so. In other words there is a bodily condition which may prevent ft person from working by day at his usual calling, but obliges him to to labour all night under a mental Btimulua of which he knows 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 an infernal and frightful fact I And this too 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 the 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 : " Ia 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 ittle 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 bad not a drop of blood in her body, 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 she moved. " A doctor attended her for twelve months, and finally said it was no use giving ber any more medicine as it would do no good. In May, 1891, I took ber to the Dewsbury Infirmary. Bbc got no better there, and I thought I was surely to lose her. She was then thirteen years of age. " One day a lady (Mrs Lightoller) called at my shop, and seeing how bid my daughter wap, spoke of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, and persuaded us to try it. I got a bottle from tbe Thornhill 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 s'eadily improved. S)on she was strong as ever, and has S'nce been in the brst of health and can take any kind of food. After she had taken the Syrup only two weeks the n ighbouis were surprised at her imoroved appearat.ca and I told them wbat hid brc ught it about — that Sei gel's Syrup hid done what the doctors could not do, it saved her life. Yours truly, (Signed), (MrsO Sakah Ann Shkahd, 19, Brewery Lane, Thornhill Lees, near Dowflbury, October lltb, 1892." The inciting cause of all this young girl's pi 1 if ul suffering was indig^stioa and dyspepsia, dropsy being one of its most dangerous symitom". It a'tacka both youth and age. i s fearful and often fatal results being duo to the fact that physicians usually treat the symptoms instead of tho disease itself. " A child's drenrnp," says Dr Richardson, " are signs of disturbed health and should b.i regarded with anxiety." The sime is true of tie dreams of older people. They mean poison in the stomach and point to the immediate usa of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup.