Dr. William Thornton's views on sleep, dreams, and resuscitation

William Thornton, MD, was a polymath who designed the Capitol of the U.S. Capital and the Octagon House, present home of the American Institute of Architecture. He was the founding director of the U.S. Patent Office. His collected papers, which are now preserved at the U.S. Library of Congress, though pruned by the wife who lived almost 40 years after him, are extensive and include comments on science, education, slavery, and politics. His views on sleep and dreaming and his concepts of resuscitation are reviewed as the opinions of an educated man early in the nineteenth century.