What Dreams may come.

Manawatu Herald, 16 May 1895, Page 3

What Dreams may come.

— . »■ «» - — =_. ■ In a recent lecture at the Royal Intftiltition, Dr B. W. Richardson says that the sleep of health is dreamless. " Dreams," says Shakespeare, <( are children of an idle i Wain;'' If both the doctor and the poet ' are right it follows that idle brains .are unhealthy brains. No doubt there might | be truth in the inference, but that is not quite the point. Are all dreams signs of a diseased condition? To this the doctor s:iys " Ko." He divides dreams into two classes j those started by noises or other causes outside the sleeper, and those produced by pain, fever, or indigestion* Here we inject & fact. We receive multitudes of letters containing this affirmation, almost in identical words : 1 was worse tired in the morning than when I went to bed" To this the doctor has an answer. He sayg) " When we feel wearied in the mo)'mii(f ta'ij lilcety it results ft'om dreams that we have forgotten^ Quite SO. In other words there is a bodily condition which mfty prevent a persoll from forking by day at his usual callings but obllgeß him to labour all night under a mental stimulus of which lie knows nothing save by its resulting exhaustion. These unhappy wretches toil harder, therefore, for no compensation, when they are ill, than they nave to do to earn a living when they ai'e well. What ftn infernal and frightful fact I. And this too without taking into account their physical suffering at all times. "Night," said Coleridge, " i? my hell." From one of the letters referred to we quote what a woman says of her daughter : " She ibas worse tife'l hi rt morning than when stu wad 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 : " In June, 1890, my daughter Ann Elizabeth became low, weak, and fretful, and complained of pain iv 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 Btomach except a little soda water and" lime water. Later on, her feet and legs began to swell nnd puff from dropsy. She was now pale as death and looked as though she had 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 her any more medicine as it would do no good. In May, 1891, I took her to the Devrsbury Infirmary. She got no better there, and I thought I was surely going to loso her. She was then thirteen years of age. " One day a lady (Mrs Ligh toller) called at my shop, and seeing how bad my daughter was, spoke of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, and persuaded us to try it. I got a bottle from the ThornhilJ Lees Co-operative Stores, and she began taking i'» In two days she found a little relit f j 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), (Mis) Sarah Ann Sheard, 19, Brewery Lane, Thornhill Lees, near Dewsbury, October 11th, 1898." The inciting cause of all this young girl's pitiful 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 tothefaot that physicians usually treat the symptoms instead of the disease itself. " A child's dreams," 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.