DREAM

 Dream

                                                        

PKGhatak, MD

The dream the mother of Siddhartha Gautama, queen Maya, had, is widely known all over the world. One night Queen Maya saw in her dream that a white elephant entering her abdomen by the side. Later on, she found out to be pregnant. After giving birth to Buddha, she passed away.

The dreams of Gilgamesh are also known to history enthusiasts. In his first dream, Gilgamesh saw a meteor fall on a field; his mother told him that meant he would have compassion. In his second dream, he found an axe on the street. That became a person and a constant companion in war.

 The religious texts of every nation have records of events foretold in dreams. Kings and emperors employed dream interpreters in their courts. That job was risky because many of them lost their heads when they misinterpreted their dreams.

In the nineteenth century, the most widely known dream interpreters were Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Their theories are subjects of study in today's universities but are largely discredited by evidence based medicine. 

 These Dreams Ushered in the Modern Era.

Albert Einstein dreamed that he was skiing downhill, going faster and faster till he was approaching the speed of light. Later he worked on the speed he witnessed in the dream and found the equation of the speed of light.

Srinivas Ramanujan, a mathematical genius, gave many breakthrough formulae in math. One that is most talked about is the formula of infinitive series for Pi. He said these formulae came to him in a series of dreams over a period of time and were gifts from God. 

Otto Loewi dreamed of the same experiment for two consecutive nights. After the second dream woke him up, he immediately went to his laboratory and that work led to the discovery of a chemical, acetylcholine, the transmitter of nerve impulses.

Niels Bohr, the father of quantum mechanics, in his dream saw the nucleus of an atom with spinning electrons going around it like planets go around the sun. He was quick to get up and write that down. Later that became the structure of the atom as we understand it today.

August Kekule saw in his dream that a snake was swallowing its own tail, soon the snake looked like a ring. That gave him the clue that organic chemicals also exist in ring forms. That led to his discovery of the benzene ring, the fundamental structural formula of most biochemicals.

Frederick Banting got instructions for an experiment on the pancreas in a dream. He experimented on laboratory dogs based on the instruction and subsequently discovered Insulin that saved numerous lives of diabetics, type I.

Finally, if you feel like dreaming, then sing along - I am dreaming of a white Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op6XUBTDKNU

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