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Somnambulism   Listen
noun
Somnambulism  n.  A condition of the nervous system in which an individual during sleep performs actions appropriate to the waking state; a state of sleep in which some of the senses and voluntary powers are partially awake; noctambulism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Somnambulism" Quotes from Famous Books



... use. Caleb opposed the scheme at first; but, finding that the business of changing diverted Mr. Fogo's melancholy, gave way at last, on a promise that "no May-games" should be indulged in—a festival term which was found to include somnambulism, suicide, and ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Somnambulism might solve the second riddle, but to the first I could find no answer acceptable to my reason. And now, pursuing my aimless way, I presently came in sight of a gable of the Guest House. I could obtain a glimpse of the hut which had once been Colin Camber's workroom. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? What are all your national Wars, with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... she was conscious. Oh yes, horribly conscious. And that was the worst; and she asked herself why she could not pass out of sight, out of hearing and feeling of all the crying misery with which she was surrounded, and in a state of emotive somnambulism she walked through the crowds till she was startled from her dreams by hearing a voice calling after ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... voice, words inchoate, incomprehensible, yet with a terrible accent of rage, of malediction. This transformation of his wife, so refined, so self-contained, into a creature possessed by an almost animal fury, struck Ian with horror, although he accepted it as a phenomenon of somnambulism. He approached but did not touch her, for he had heard that it was dangerous to awaken a somnambulist. Her voice sank rapidly to a loud whisper and he heard her articulate—"My husband! Mine! Mine!"—but in no tone of tenderness, rather pronouncing the words as a passionate claim to his ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... an affection produced by hysteria, during which the patient's body becomes rigid. It is claimed by some that somnambulism is one ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... her like the cloud which she felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and perverseness, the animal and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... know more nowadays, and we understand all about somnambulism and hyp-what-you-may-call-it, and we understand just how the miracles in the Bible were worked. God works by ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... sleep, from whence I suppose they have been thought to have some connection with sleep, and have thence been termed Somnambulism; but their commencement during sleep is owing to our increased excitability by internal sensations at that time, as explained in Sect. XVIII. 14. and 15., and not to any ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... his body on the gallows. Dutch William, too, might have been considerable,—but he was Dutch, and to us proved to be nothing. Then again, so long as Sarah Jennings held the Queen's Majesty in bondage, some gleams of Kinghood for us under Marlborough:—after whom Noodleism and Somnambulism, zero on the back of zero, and all our Affairs, temporal, spiritual and eternal, jumbling at random, which we call the Career of Freedom, till Pitt stretched out his hand upon them. For four years; never again, he; never again one resembling ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... has become necessary in this "spasmodic" day to vindicate our great poet from the supposition of having written in a state of somnambulism,—to show that he was even an artist, without reference to schools. The scope of our observations is to exhibit him in that light; we wish to insist that he was a man of forethought,—that, though possessing creative genius, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... ideas of a subconscious and an unconscious, a dissociation of the components of the mind, and a splitting of the personality. Lumping the phenomena of amnesia, somnambulism, hypnotism, anesthesia, obsession and hysteria into the grand group of mental dissociations and disintegrations, he achieved a unification never considered possible before him. Suggestion as a mode of cure ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. The consequence was a premature development of the brain, that made me a "youthful prodigy" by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while, later, they induced continual headache, weakness and nervous affections, of all kinds. As these again re-acted on the brain, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... do believe in my friend. It's no joke with her. She is quite certain that she is controlled by those 'on the other side,' and that to submit is to lose so much of her own individuality. You may call it hysteria, somnambulism, hypnotism, anything you like, but that certain people are moved subconsciously to impersonate the dead I am quite ready to believe. However, 'impersonation' is the least convincing (from my point of view) of all the phases of mediumship. I have paid very ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... changelings are said not to live more than to the eighteenth or nineteenth year." As a practical application of this, it may be mentioned that Luther advised the drowning of a certain child of twelve years old, on the ground of its being a devil's changeling. Somnambulism is, with Luther, the result of diabolical agency. "Formerly," says he, "the Papists, being superstitious people, alleged that persons thus afflicted had not been properly baptized, or had been baptized by a drunken ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... to Marie Louise, who stood lonely and distraught. He felt ashamed of his word "sorry" and hoped she hadn't heard it. Silently and crudely he angled his arm, and she took it and went along with him in a somnambulism. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... from her as from a reptile. I slept none. In the morning she turned to kiss me. I drew back my head in horror, and saw that she too was horrified at my manner. I bade her begone for a murderer, and, committed thus by my agony, told her she had confessed the whole story in a fit of somnambulism. Then she flew from me, crying she was innocent, tearing her hair in good acting—and there she walks by the passages under the sting of her guilt. Oh! she dare not face me, even were I to allow a meeting, which I ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... spectator. And, in the long intervals between the soft clapping of hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in the trees, and the shu-shu of sandals, lightly stirring the dust. Unto what, I ask myself, may this be likened? Unto nothing; yet it suggests some fancy of somnambulism—dreamers, who dream themselves ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... Somnambulism and Cramp. By Baron Reichenbach. Translated from the German, by John S. Hittell. New York. Calvin Blanchard. 12mo. pp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... to look for it at night, Mr. Drysdale?" I asked, as I wished to know whether he was aware of his somnambulism. ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... quotes Franklin against magnetism but Sprengel in his Pharmacology says 'Franklin, sickly as he was, took no part whatever in the investigation.' The Academy again investigated (1825-31) somnambulism, discovered by Puysegur, Mesmer's scholar. In their report of two year's investigation, eleven M. D.'s unanimously pronounced in favor of all important phenomena ascribed to somnambulism. A fairly complete synopsis of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... reflections. But then, the Church, that new Sibyl, had a thousand secrets to make the absent near. Into this kingdom of reverie, and with it into a paradise of ambitious refinements, the earthly love enters, and becomes a prolonged somnambulism. Of religion it learns the art of directing towards an unseen object sentiments whose natural direction is towards objects of sense. Hence a love defined by the absence of the beloved, choosing to be without hope, protesting [217] against all lower ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... an epidemic at Morzines in upper Savoy. It began with two little girls, pious and precocious, who had convulsive attacks. It spread to other children and then to adults. Amongst the younger of those affected, ecstasy, catalepsy, and somnambulism were seen, and later, convulsions only; convulsive attacks returned several times a day. An attack usually began with yawning, restless movements, the aspects of fear passing into fury with violent and impulsive movements, with ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... a curious story of a monomaniac whose madness was associated with St. Paul's. Dr. Pritchard, in an essay on "Somnambulism and Animal Magnetism," in the "Cyclopaedia of Medicine," gives the following ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... in a public street and was delivered of a living child during a syncope which lasted four hours. Epley reports painless labor in a patient with paraplegia. Fahnestock speaks of the case of a woman who was delivered of a son while in a state of artificial somnambulism, without pain to herself or injury to the child. Among others mentioning painless or unconscious labor are Behrens (during profound sleep), Eger, Tempel, Panis, Agnoia, Blanckmeister, Whitehill, Gillette, Mattei, Murray, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... her outside again. She looked steadily into my face with eyes shining and her whole being transformed. In some intuitive way, surviving probably from the somnambulism, she knew or guessed as ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... a reading ticket at once, and read the books in the order I put down. Never forget to leave paper and pencil by your bedside. Leah will soon get accustomed to your quiet somnambulism; I will never trouble your rest for more than an hour or so each night, but you can make up for it by staying in bed an hour or two longer. You will have to work during the day from the pencil notes in Blaze you will have written ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... state and the experiences thence derived are subjects for psychological science to investigate. The experiences allotted by du Maurier to "Peter Ibbetson" are not altogether fantastic and unwarranted, as the records of somnambulism and hypnotism abundantly prove. When we remember that nothing deserving the name of Psychology or Psychic Science exists in the western world to-day, we need not wonder why men eminent for ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... and its head attracted a number of applicants for admission, and a couple of new boarders made a brief appearance at the table. One of them was of the class of people who grumble if they don't get canvas-backs and woodcocks every day, for three-fifty per week. The other was subject to somnambulism, or walking in the night, when he ought to have been asleep in his bed. In this state he walked into several of the boarders' chambers, his eyes wide open, as is usual with somnambulists, and, from some odd instinct or other, wishing to know what ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... intellectual operations. We know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time, or by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not (like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely by their results. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's argument. Whatever we are directly aware of, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... part of the mesmerizer. Dr. Carpenter, then a great authority, defended his theory; but the medical branch of the British Association disdained to consider the matter. Dr. Braid thought the mesmeric trance was only a state of somnambulism artificially brought about, and he coined the word hypnotism to indicate the artificial sleep. Other attempts to promote the cause of hypnotism were made in the United States and other lands, but no very definite or scientific results were reached ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... given the shore; and it, too, had been seized: but, as that had been before their birth, they had not observed it—in such a numb somnambulism ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... against Admiral Bartram's constitutional tendency to somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept outside his door. No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to the usual precaution taken in such cases. He peremptorily declined to be locked into his room; he even ignored his ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... thoughtfully, "certain persons have had visions of the spiritual world through the complete detachment which somnambulism produces between their external form and their inner being. 'In this state,' says Swedenborg in his treatise on Angelic Wisdom (No. 257) 'Man may rise into the region of celestial light because, his corporeal senses being abolished, the influence of heaven ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... present cases analogous to mine in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aerial sitter to canvas, simply ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... occult powers of the mind, with which the newly discovered action of magnetism seemed to him to be connected. At first, his ideas on the subject were a good deal mixed. When, in 1832, a terrible epidemic of cholera was spreading its ravages, he wrote to Doctor Chapelain, suggesting that somnambulism—he would have called it hypnotism to-day—should be employed to seek out the causes of the malady, and a test applied to prove whether its virtues were real or chimerical. In 1834, he had come to pin his faith to the healing powers of magnetism. "When you ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... circuit, peregrination, discursion|, ramble, pilgrimage, hajj, trek, course, ambulation[obs3], march, walk, promenade, constitutional, stroll, saunter, tramp, jog trot, turn, stalk, perambulation; noctambulation[obs3], noctambulism; somnambulism; outing, ride, drive, airing, jaunt. equitation, horsemanship, riding, manege[Fr], ride and tie; basophobia[obs3]. roving, vagrancy, pererration|; marching and countermarching; nomadism; vagabondism, vagabondage; hoboism [U.S.]; gadding; flit, flitting, migration; emigration, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... some duration I awoke, and found my guard in a helpless state of somnambulism, which was so very deep I did not like to disturb her; neither could I move, as the better to guard me she was lying half over me, I, therefore, though anxious about the time we had been sleeping, decided to sit still and wait until she showed some signs of ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... begun. Fantastic phantasms fly before the light— Pale, gibbering ghosts and ghouls and goblin fears: Man who hath walked in sleep—what thousands years? Groping among the shadows of the night, Moon-struck and in a weird somnambulism, Mumbling some cunning cant or catechism, Thrilled by the electric magic of the skies— Sun-touched by Truth—awakes and rubs ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... that they seemed darker than ever—and haunted with an almost tragic wistfulness. She had the manner of one facing a ghost which she had vainly sought to lay. He came so close before he spoke her name that she turned toward him with a start, as though he wakened her suddenly out of somnambulism, but even as she wheeled, her face brightened and a bantering merriment sounded in her voice, countering all his solicitous ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... to do," Hotchkiss said cheerfully, leaning forward, "look around a little yourself before you call in the police. Somnambulism is a queer thing. It's a question whether we are most ourselves sleeping or waking. Ever think of that? Live a saintly life all day, prayers and matins and all that, and the subconscious mind hikes you out of bed at ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... whom I have related my night's adventure have one and all been sceptical, and accounted for the whole by supposing me to have been half asleep, or in a state resembling somnambulism. All I can say is, that my own impressions are directly contrary to this supposition; and that I feel as sure that I saw the figure that sat before me with my bodily eyes, as I am sure I now see you with ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... address was made to her on any subject when in her sleep-waking state. She was left to lie unheeded. I pursued a homoeopathic treatment of her case. But the medicines constantly produced effects opposite to what I expected. She now suffered less from spasm and somnambulism, but with increasing marks of weakness and decay. All seemed as if the end of her sufferings drew near. It was too late for the means I wished to use. Affected so variously and powerfully by magnetic means in the first years of her illness, she had now no life more, so thoroughly was ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... child," replied Signora Rovero, clasping her to her heart, "I saw almost all our guests this morning, immediately before they left. They had already heard of your somnambulism, and our servants had told how you suffered with it from your childhood. All are convinced ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... skin, integument sleep-walking, somnambulism hide, epidermis bird, ornithology fleshly, carnal bird, aviary hearer, auditor bee, apiary snake, serpent bending, flexible heap, aggregation wrinkle, corrugation laugh, cachinnation slow, dilatory ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... sorts of screams in unearthly tones; their eyes remain fixed, sometimes bereft of all light and expression, cold and stony, and sometimes kindled into flames of passion; they would pass into the state of somnambulism, without aim or conscious direction in their movements, looking at some point, where was no apparent object of vision, with a wild, unmeaning glare. There are some indications that they had acquired the art ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... for reasons which need not be discussed here, represents abnormal conditions of mind; insanity, for example, somnambulism, hallucinations. And deeds issuing from these are certainly not what we called deeds in the fullest sense, deeds expressive of character. No; but these abnormal conditions are never introduced as the origin of deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... I'm afraid I can't tell you. I had begun to think you had gone mad. It must be either that or somnambulism. ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... time the midpoint had been passed, I was living in a sort of waking dream; or rather, a state of somnambulism. I ate; my hands moved the controls. And yet all the while my mind was wandering elsewhere—out to Garth's body under the blazing light of Rigel, back to the moon and Kelvar, or else in an unreal, shadowy world of ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson

... that he grew each moment paler. He had reached that stage of intoxication at which ordinary drinkers fall under the table and sleep. Athos, however, did not do that; he dreamed aloud without sleeping. There was something frightful in this somnambulism of drunkenness. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... whither he is going. His powers are scattered, his consciousness is obscured. It is an awful thing for him if, just at the moment when he is most asleep, there comes a thunderclap to break in upon his somnambulism! Then he comes very nigh ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... you arise very early in the morning; totter down-stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. The mail sleigh takes you up and carries ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... make glad the spicy board of rich ministering Dowager, of philosophic Farmer-General. O nights and suppers of the gods! Of a truth, the long-demonstrated will now be done: 'the Age of Revolutions approaches' (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy blessed ones. Man awakens from his long somnambulism; chases the Phantasms that beleagured and bewitched him. Behold the new morning glittering down the eastern steeps; fly, false Phantasms, from its shafts of light; let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever. It is Truth and Astraea Redux that (in the shape of Philosophism) ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... but Els enjoined silence on everyone and, after telling them to go back to bed, said briefly that Eva in her somnambulism had this time gone out into the street and been brought back by the knight. Finally, she again said to Heinz, "Presently!" and then went to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... his invention, or a science in something that happens every day unnoticed by ordinary eyes—once allow this, and there is nothing to cause an outcry in such phenomena, no violent exception to nature's laws, but the operation of a recognized faculty; possibly a kind of mental somnambulism, as it were. If, therefore, the hypothesis upon which the various ways of divining the future are based seem absurd, the facts remain. Remark that it is not really more wonderful that the seer should foretell ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen that the other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed' by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollect that savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken, lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed to foul play, [163] we must readily admit that the weird ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... corpse of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch) moaning in his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and ninepence in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey's face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, 'Might I make so bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?' and how Mr Dombey had replied, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to—accommodate you—sir,—and if June doesn't accommodate you—I'd rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And it sails June second." Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulism case'!" the Senior ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... asserted itself in ungrammatical language. My window—a rear room on the ground floor—in this way derived blended light and shadow from the court. So low was the window-sill that, had I been the least disposed to somnambulism, it would have broken out under such favorable auspices, and I should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations as to the origin of the court were not altogether gratuitous, for by means of this window I once saw the Past, as through a glass ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... Really," added the reverend father in a low voice to the prelate, while Rodin continued to write, "I am quite confounded. I read—I see—and yet I can hardly believe my eyes. Just before, exhausted and dying—and now with his mind as clear and penetrating as ever. Can this be one of the phenomena of somnambulism, in which the mind alone governs and sustains ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... convict him of it on the bare word of men who, by their own showing, had not only shared the infatuation, but proved traitors to it? An ingenious defence,—indeed, the only one which could by any possibility be suggested, anterior to the days of Choate and somnambulism; but in vain. He was sentenced, and it was not, apparently, till the judge reproached him for the destruction he had brought on his followers that he showed any sign of emotion. Then the tears came into his eyes. But he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... funeral—his tendency to somnambulism manifested itself. His mother and sister, who were sleeping together, saw the door open and a form in white enter. Naturally nervous at such a time, and living in a day of almost universal superstition, they were terrified and covered their ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... home at night, which was frequently very late. Hence a premature development of the brain, which, while it made her a youthful prodigy by day—one such youthful prodigy, it has been justly said, is often the pest of a whole neighbourhood—rendered her the nightly victim of spectral illusions, somnambulism, &c.; checked her growth; and eventually brought on continual headaches, weakness, and various nervous affections. As soon as the light was removed from her chamber at night, this ill-tended girl was haunted by colossal faces, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... to a hard-working friend of mine, who, even during his holiday among the Alps, must needs dream one night that he was making a post-mortem upon himself, and on another night rose from his bed in a state of somnambulism to perform certain aberrant and disorderly acts, not unlike what his patients would have performed in ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... to within about half a mile of his house. He would not have done that had he been bent on a senile amour involving his absence from home, and had that scheme of pleasure been in his mind, he would have provided himself with money. Again, a fit of 'ambulatory somnambulism,' and the emergence of a split or secondary personality with forgetfulness of his real name and address, is not likely to have seized on him at that very moment and place. If it did, as there were no railways, he could not rush off in a crowd and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... the words there was the effect of a spray. The irritability of the one active cell subsided, that of the others was aroused. Somnambulism ceased. The entire brain awoke. But the truth had not yet fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which, a week previous, Lennox had uttered, which all have uttered, all at least before whom the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... quite different types. In the first case, the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder actually accepts the imaginative solution offered; it is, according to Fiorani's phrase, "somnambulism of the bladder." In the other case, there is no such somnambulism, but a psychic and nervous disturbance, not arising in the bladder at all, irradiates convulsively, and whether or not the bladder is overfull, attacks a vesical nervous system which is not yet sufficiently well-balanced to withstand ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... was a real disease, or I know not if it may be called a kind of somnambulism. Without doubt it was the effect of extreme lassitude, occasioned by ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... girl, Mlle. Stanislaw Tomczyk, then about eighteen years old, was sent to Dr. Ochorowicz for medical treatment. She suffered greatly from nervousness. In order to bring about relief Dr. Ochorowicz hypnotized her, inducing somnambulism; and in this state she displayed, quite spontaneously, a number of "mediumistic" phenomena. This proved to be the beginning of her mediumship. She possessed a power unknown to herself; and it probably would have remained for ever unknown had she not fallen into the hands of a man such as Dr. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington



Words linked to "Somnambulism" :   noctambulism, somnambulation, walking, noctambulation, somnambulist, sleepwalking, sleeping



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