A nightmare

It is also called the strangler, and in Arabic it is sometimes called jasum and naidulan. A nightmare is a disease in which a person, falling asleep, feels that a heavy ghost is falling on him and is pressing on him; his breathing becomes difficult, his voice and movements stop, and he almost suffocates due to blockage of the passages. When all this passes, the person immediately awakens.

A nightmare is a harbinger of one of three diseases: epilepsy, sickness or mania; it occurs when the nightmare occurs from the accumulation of juices, and not from other causes not related to matter. However, in most cases, the cause of the nightmare is fumes from thick juices of mucous, blood or black gall origin. These vapors suddenly rise into the brain when the movement that occurs during wakefulness and dissipates the vapors gives way to rest. Each juice evokes representations of a corresponding color; the signs of each of them are already known from the basic rules stated above. Sometimes a nightmare arises because the head is suddenly struck by a strong cold during sleep, which compresses, thickens and squeezes the brain and the sleeper sees ghosts of the same color. Nightmares do not happen except when the brain is weak due to its overheating or a disorder in its nature.

Treatment. They treat nightmares with bloodletting and relaxation with the help of substances that remove all juice. If the juices are thick and there is a lot of them, then the following laxative is useful: take harbak in the amount of one dirham, scammonium resin - a third of a dirham, coloquinte pulp - a quarter of a dirham and anise - half a dirham; this medicine is given if the patient’s strength is significant, and if not, then give lapis lazuli pills, or ustumahikun pills, or dodder pills, or strong iyarajas, or mad cucumber iyarajas, and especially the iyarajas of Rufus. Then you should strengthen your head using the methods that you already know from the general rules. Among the remedies useful for nightmares is the constant use of medicinal peony.

If the cause of the nightmare is a cold that has affected the brain and also caused ghosts, then hot oils with warming and astringent properties, medicinal dressings that cause redness, and other remedies should be used. We should not dwell too much on this, for what we have already said is sufficient.