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Oxonian, An

"Thaumaturgia"

Some dreams,
they assert, are governed partly by the temperature of the body, and
partly by the humour which mostly abounds in it; to which may be added
the apprehensions which have preceded the day before; and which are
often remarked in dogs, and other animals, which bark and make a noise
in their sleep. Dreams, they observe, proceed from the humours and
temperature of the body; we see the choleric dreams of fire, combats,
yellow colours, etc. the phlegmatic of water baths, of sailing on the
sea; the melancholies of thick fumes, deserts, fantasies, hideous faces,
etc. they that have the hinder part of their brain clogged, with viscous
humours, called by physicians Ephialtes incubus, dream that they are
suffocated. And those who have the orifice of their stomach loaded with
malignant humours, are affrighted with strange visions, by reason of
those venemous vapours that mount to the brain and distemper it.

POETICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF THE IMAGINATION IN DREAMS.
Were we to enter more profoundly into the mysterious phenomena of
dreams, our present lucubrations might become too abstruse; and, after
all, no philosophical nor satisfactory account can be given of them.


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