In another case with which I
am acquainted, a little girl of eight, after mental excitement or
indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that
she was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted
herself in consequence, after the manner of the Ganymede in the
eagle's clutch, as depicted by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may
be noted, belong to two 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
the inflow of excitement. In children of somewhat nervous
temperament, manifestations of this kind may occur as an
occasional accident, up to about the age of seven or eight; and
thereafter, the nervous control of the bladder having become
firmly established, they cease to happen, the nervous energy
required to affect the bladder sufficing to awake the dreamer. In
very rare cases, however, the phenomenon may still occasionally
happen, even in adolescence or later, in individuals who are
otherwise quite free from it.
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