How do Sleep-walkers See.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7069, 15 February 1893, Page 2

How do Sleep-walkers See.

Professor Fischer describes a remarkable ease observed by himself and others when a boy at school. A young man apparently of a hale constitution, and far from exhibiting any symptoms of a nervous temperament, was habitually subject to somnambulism. Hij fits came on regularly about 10 o’clock at night. The scene was a large apartment, containing 60 beds in four rows. He ran about violently, romped, wrestled, and boxed with his companions, who enjoyed the sport at bis expense.

Says the professor : “ I can perfectly well remember that whpo running, he always held his band before him, with his fingers stretched out. He was remarkably agile, and would leap over the beds, and his compamons could scarcely ever catch him. When he escaped through the door he flow through a gallery to his own room.

“ There he rested, frequently taking up a book and reading softly or with a loud voice, conducting if my recollection serves me accurately—his outstretched fingers over the lines. His eyes were alternately open and closed ; but even when open they were incapable of vision, being convulsively drawn upward, showing only the white. “The general belief that somnambulists see by means of the points of their fingers us well as the observation that, while run* ning, a somnambulist always carried his hands and outstretched fingers before him as if these were his organs of sight, as also bis

reading (as it appeared to us) by means cf the points of bis fingers, lad us to the idea of tying gloves upon his bands and stockings upon bis legs. “ Besides, we had been informed that during his nightly wanderings he had been known to play at skittles —a game he was very fond of when awake —and that he had always accurately counted the number of pins knocked down by stretching out his fingers in a direction towards them, so correctly, indeed, that it was impossible to deceive or impose upon him. " In shorty we seised the opportunity of his most profound sleep and insensibility to tie on the gloves and stockings. At the usual time he rose up and sprang out of bed; but, although we began to'tease and provoke him, be did not move from the spot, and groped and tumbled about like a blind or drunken man. “At length he perceived the cause of his distress and took off the gloves. Scarcely were bis bands uncovered when he started up in a lively manner, throw the gloves with ironical indignation upon the ground, making a ludicrous observation upon the means taken to blind him • and then began to ran about the room as usual.”