The characteristic of dreams is that of exaggerating internal and external sensations, from which a skilful medical observer can draw the most far-reaching inferences...

Thus, for instance, supposing the injured organ to be the liver or the heart, the patient will dream that he is pierced by a sword, a dagger, or some other instrument which pierces these organs; and if these dreams are frequently repeated, they may be regarded as precursors of a serious affliction, the effects of which the physician can prevent by suitable preventive means. The following examples prove the truth of this statement:

Arnaud de Villeneuve dreams that he is bitten by a dog on the leg, and a few days later a cancerous ulcer appears on the same spot.

[Villeneuve (1240-1311) was a medical writer who emphasized practicality and had a high reputation due to an extraordinary cure rate (for the time). His output was copious and in Latin; I haven't tried to trace this passage.--C.W.]

The scholar Conrad Gesner [sic] dreamt one night that he was bitten on the left side of the chest by a snake, and soon a deep and serious lesion appeared on the same part. It was a malignant carbuncle that ended in his death after five days.

[Wikipedia says Renaissance scholar Conrad Gessner died "of plague" 1565/12/13. --C.W.]

Monsieur Teste, a former minister of Louis Philippe, dreamt three days before his death that he had an attack of apoplexy, and three days after his dream he actually succumbed to that disease.

[Louis Philippe reigned 1830-48. I have not hunted much for M. Teste. --C.W.]

I myself dreamt one night that I had a violent sore throat. When I woke up, I was fine, but a few hours later I suffered from intense tonsillitis.

[I'll take this one on faith; Wikipedia has seen fit to ignore Dr. Macario entirely. Only an antiquarian bookseller restored his first name to me. --C.W.]

Source: Du sommeil, des rêves et du somnambulisme (Sleep, dreams and somnambulism) by Maurice Macario, 1857, quoted in Dreams and how to direct them, 2022, p.99; Daniel Bernardo's translation of Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger by Hervey de Saint-Denys, 1867.

EDITOR'S NOTE

These are some of the earliest prodromal dreams (dreams warning of illness) explicitly described as such by a dream researcher. I apologize for their brevity and fragmentary documentation; they're from a poor translation of a tertiary source (well, secondary in the Case of the Tonsillitis).

--Chris Wayan

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