Historical dream account · English · original text

The name on the bottle

Havelock Ellis

The World of Dreams (1922) · Printed page 43; normalized HTML paragraph block 98

I dreamed once that I was with a doctor in his surgery, and saw in his hand a note from a patient saying that doctors were fools and did him no good, but he had lately taken some selvdrolla, recommended by a friend, and it had done him more good than anything, so please send him some more. I saw the note clearly, not, indeed, being conscious of reading it word by word, but only of its meaning as I looked at it; the one word I actually seemed to see, letter by letter, was the name of the drug, and that changed and fluctuated beneath my vision as I gazed at it, the final impression being selvdrolla. The doctor took from a shelf a bottle containing a bright yellow oleaginous fluid, and poured a little out, remarking that it had lately come into favour, especially in uric acid disorders, but was extremely expensive. I expressed my surprise, having never before heard of it. Then, again to my surprise, he poured rather copiously from the bottle on to a plate of food, saying, in explanation, that it was pleasant to take and not dangerous.

Source & context

A historical dream account recorded in Havelock Ellis’s The World of Dreams, using its 1922 edition (first published 1911). The source distinguishes Ellis’s own dreams from separately identified or unnamed contributors. This is not a Synastry community submission.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (Constable & Company, 1922; first published 1911), p. 43. Public-domain historical dream account, Project Gutenberg transcription.

Individual dream date not specified; exact excerpt from 1922 edition of work first published in 1911.

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Printed page 43; normalized HTML paragraph block 98

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Content notes
  • Medical imagery

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