Deformities of Nature: Sleepwalking and Non-Conscious States of Mind in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain.

ABSTRACT

A young man of a cholerick constitution lying asleep upon his bed, rose up thence on the sudden, took a sword, opened the doors, and muttering much to himself went into the street, where he quarrelled alone, and fancying that he was in fight with his enemies, he made divers passes, till at length he fell down, and through an unhappy slip of his sword, he gave himself a dangerous wound upon the breast. Hereupon being awaked and affrighted, and dreading lest such his night-walkings might at some time or other create him as great dangers, he sent for me to be his physician, and was accordingly cured.