n which his attention was fixed.

Tuke tells of a school-boy who being unable to master a school-problem
in geometry retired to bed still thinking of the subject; he was found
late at night by his instructor on his knees pointing from spot to spot
as though he were at the blackboard. He was so absorbed that he paid no
attention to the light of the candle, nor to the speech addressed to
him. The next morning the teacher asked him if he had finished his
problem, and he replied that he had, having dreamt it and remembered
the dream. There are many such stories on record. Quoted by Gray,
Mesnet speaks of a suicidal attempt made in his presence by a
somnambulistic woman. She made a noose of her apron, fastened one end
to a chair and the other to the top of a window. She then kneeled down
in prayer, made the sign of the cross, mounted a stool, and tried to
hang herself. Mesnet, scientific to the utmost, allowed her to hang as
long as he dared, and then stopped the performance. At another time she
attempted to kill herself by violently throwing herself on the floor
after having failed to fling herself out of the window. At still
another time she tried poison, filling a glass with water, putting
several coins into it, and hiding it after bidding farewell to her
family in writing; the next night, when she was again somnambulistic,
she changed her mind once more, writing to her family explaining her
change of purpose. Mesnet relates some interesting experiments made
upon a French sergeant in a condition of somnambulism, demonstrating
the excitation of ideas in the mind through the sense of touch in the
extremities. This soldier touched a table, passed his hands over it,
and finding nothing on it, opened the drawer, took out a pen, found
paper and an inkstand, and taking a chair he sat down and wrote to his
commanding officer speaking of his bravery, and asking for a medal. A
thick metallic plate was then placed before his eyes so as to
completely intercept vision. After a few minutes, during which he
wrote a few words with a jumbled stroke, he stopped, but without any
petulance. The plate was removed and he went on writing. Somnambulism
may assume such a serious phase as to result in the commission of
murder. There is a case of a man of twenty-seven, of steady habits, who
killed his child when in a state of somnambulism. He was put on trial
for murder, and some of the most remarkable facts of his somnambulistic
feats were elicit