The Magnetic Sleep Doctor and the Shelf-Life of Dream Images

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 382

This interesting and semi-bizarre image shows a doctor of magnetism (and necrologer and astrologer and several other things) conspiring at the edge of science and the heart of all things dark to adjust the dreams of the formerly sleeping man.  The patient is awakening and the doctor is doing, well, things that I don't understand:  suffice to say that he was trying to assuage good dreams for the other man via the secrets of magnetism.

The mysteries of sleep and the dreamworld were hotbeds of investigation from all sides, and there is a fairly deep publication record on the subject for the 1550-1700 period. This image comes from Le Palais du Prince du Sommeil, ou est enseignee l'Onriomancie autrement l'Art de Deviner par les Songes, printed in Lyon by Jean Pavhlhe in 1670, and written by the spectre-like M. Mirbel, whose history and biography are just about non-existent. 

The idea of approaching sleep and dreams via magnetism is unusual even in the very unusual history of unusual ways of adjusting dreams--the interpretation of dreams is evidently closely related in mysterious and bendy ways, almost as convoluted and soft as the physical means used to induce them. 

The history of big dreams and dreaming in general is far bigger than the issue of fixing them, and much paler, considering the vast range of imagery.  Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections), Havelock Ellis (World of Dreams), Freud (oy vey), Shakespeare ("we are such stuff..."), Leonardo, Joseph (and the Pharohs), William Blake, Solomon and of course Daniel, and then on and on into the night.

Daniel's dreams (as in The Book of Daniel) were gigantic and full, and there have been many others who have recorded their dreams in the history of literature and religion.  I must say though that the dream of King Prasenajit (the ruler of Kosala,  located on the northeast of modern Uttar Pradesh, India), a disciple of Buddha, had a dream in ten parts which troubled him greatly, and when you look at its elements you can see why:

-Three jugs set in a row, one put against the other. The first and the last of the jugs are mutually exchanging the vapours of the liquids that are contained in them, vapours which never descend in the empty jug situated in the midst.
-A horse that swallows the food concomitantly through the mouth and through the anus.
-A tree full of flowers.
-A tree full of fruits.
-A man who is knitting a rope. Behind the man there is a sheep. The owner of the sheep eats the rope knitted by the first man.
-A fox lying down on a bed made of gold, and eating out of golden vessels.
-A cow suckling her own calf, against the law of nature.
-Four oxen that arrive, bellowing, from the four corners of the horizon. They are rushing upon each other, in order to start fighting, but all of a sudden they vanish, right before clashing their horns together.
-A pond surrounded by slopes. Its water is turbid in the offing, but clear near the shore.
-A huge torrent, entirely red.

This would give anyone pause, even more so if you were a disciple of the Buddha.  None of these images fit into my dream dictionary (especially the horse one), but perhaps they are deeply related to the times and not transferable over the centuries.  Which is an interesting way of looking at a particular time and understanding a bit of it that doesn't normally sink into the public record--the expression of dreams might tell a little more about the time and place than about the person.  This sort of made-up historiographic (?) approach reminds me a little of snooping around old Domesday books and business/city directories, looking at the sorts of jobs that were common once upon a time and now slipped away into the tar pit.  So to with dream imagery?  Perhaps like just about everything else, dream images may well have a shelf life.  (I was going to reference Twinkies as an example contrary to this, but I understand that a new something-or-other has been added to it/them to make it so that these fine products will actually go bad after a while, rather than like before, when it could be counted on the cockroaches nibbling on them into eternity following the death of Dr. Strangelove.  Perhaps a former-chemist/librarian out there knows what this ingredient is and will share the knowledge?)

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For example, this 18th century directory for what dream images may "mean" are mostly foreign to the general experience, I would say.  On the other hand, to attach meaning to the importance of dreaming about stealing pepper may be a little quixotic, but much less so than interpreting it as a harbinger f melancholy.  I know that to even mention the business of pepper theft in 1650 tells us a lot about its importance and why it would've been stealable and can tell us something about the foods of the time, trade, commodities and such.  Thinking about it in terms of a predictive element may not be as fruitful...

Comments

[Jeff]

My understanding is that Twinkies last about a month, and they can go that long because they have no dairy products in them. I wonder if the cream in them was different when we were kids, or if we enjoyed them so simply because they were sweet. I've had a couple in my adult life, but I no longer like them. What were really special for me were Yodels and Ring Dings, and I KNOW the cream in them changed. Everything changed, including the size. I know it I know it I know it I know it

[John Ptak]

Huh. I thought that the More Modern Twinky lasted forever and that there were little tiny vaulted cities inside them. Because they were basically made of plastic and wouldn't eat itself up. I remember in my dim memory of taste that Ring Dings that were huge and cost 12 cents back in 1966--the ones that came in a white and red and blue wrapper and were as big as your ten-year-old palm, the ones that you'd get to read your comic books in the cemtery-- tasted really good and that the white fluff inside them wouldn't peel paint or anything and tasted like cream. Is there a singular form of Twinkies?

[Jeff]

BTW, Laura has rich dreams and has a long history of paying attention to them, whereas I usually wake up rested as if from anesthesia. I HAVE had some extremely powerful dreams, but they are rare. Otherwise, mine fade quickly from the barest awareness of them. Laura said the other day that she thought it would be interesting (but probably some other word) if They ever had a machine to record dreams. I thought it would become a terrible drug and leave precious few people in the waking world. She countered, wondering what would be so bad if people DID return to their dreams, examine them, pay attention to them. I could not answer well, having immediately assumed that it would be like World of Warcraft or Second Life ... Gone. I think she might be right.

[John Ptak]

I have little doubt that books and tv and movies and Second Life and the asosicated stuff are all stone age atempts at getting at exactly what Laura is talking about-keys to the Big Show in our own noggins. Everything else is just fanfare for unlocking the bits that we want to get at in our own heAds. Theoretically, everything is up there, and the stuff we remember is just the tiniest speck of that potential. Sure there's the otherall flavor of the "sensation" of all our lives' experiences, but I'd be curious to see what my eyes saw and recorded on 21 November 1958. NAd 1962. And so on. Access this, and nothing gets done! There's a wonderful/somewhat horrible film called "Until the End of the World" by Wim Wenders (1991) that touches on just this topic--a machine that records our memories and dreams and plays them back. And yes it IS addictive. Maybe the way anything in the world gets done is because we can't remember 1% of everything we've thought or see or done; otherwise, there's too much to remember in too-few years of available time to do it in. There are some addicted diarists who--sick people really--have to limit what they do in a day because they must record EVERYTHING. Their days are numbed down to the barest essentials because it takes 6 hours to write about just that stuff. Forget going to the movies for these guys--it would be too much to write about. The same would probably be true about us and recorded memory and dreams--unlss of course those fabulous dreams that we think we have all all enhanced post-awakening and all of that stuff that goes on in REM is stupid. I dunno.

[marie]

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