Like many other sciences, the "science of dreams" is at a relative standstill during the Middle Ages.The examnation of dreams is reduced to symbolic interpretations through analogies. Encyclopedia-type dream-books come into existence. They only show that dreams of those times are similar to today's. There are, however, some exceptions like Saphadi (investigating the dreams of the blind) and Augustinus (discussing the responsibility of the individual for his own dreams). 
During the Renaissance the striving toward knowledge is directed toward the immediate reality of things. There is an intense development of methodological problems and the scientia experimentalis is the heart of all science. But centuries have to pass before those principles are applied to the investigation of dreams. Unlike physics, experimental dream research begins in the middle of the XIX century. There are at least three reasons for the comparatively late start of experimental psychology: 
1. high complexity of the object of research 
2. dominance of concepts abnd images from everyday-life 
3. incorrect formulation of the problem (not causal, but symptomatic). 
 
The first attempts at experimental investigations of dreams are carried out by the Frenchmen Louis Alfred Maury. He reports observation on his own self-induced dreams. 
 
1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip of his nose. He dreamed of an awful torture, viz., that a mask of pitch was stuck to his face and then forcibly torn off, bringing the skin with it. 

2. Scissors were whetted against a pair of tweezers. He heard bells ringing, then sounds of tumult which took him back to the days of the Revolution of 1848. 

3. Eau de Cologne was held to his nostrils. He found himself in Cairo, in the shop of Johann Maria Farina. This was followed by fantastic adventures which he was not able to recall. 

4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a blister was being applied, and thought of a doctor who had treated him in childhood. 

5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed that robbers had broken into the house, and were forcing the occupants to give up their money by thrusting their feet into braziers. The Duchesse d'Abrantes, whose secretary he imagined himself to be then entered the room. 

6. A drop of water was allowed to fall on to his forehead. He imagined himself in Italy, perspiring heavily, and drinking the white wine of Orvieto. 

7. When the light of a candle screened with red paper was allowed to fall on his face, he dreamed of thunder, of heat, and of a storm at sea which he once witnessed in the English Channel.
 
 

Guillotine

 Sigmund Freud describes in his book Interpretation of Dreams the famous dream of the Guillotine by Maury: 

"The following dream of Maury's has become celebrated: He was ill in bed; his mother was sitting beside him. He 
dreamed of the Reign of Terror during the Revolution. He witnessed some terrible scenes of murder, and finally he 
himself was summoned before the Tribunal. There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, and all the sorry heroes of those terrible days; he had to give an account of himself, and after all manner of incidents which did not fix themselves in his memory, he was sentenced to death. Accompanied by an enormous crowd, he was led to the place of execution. He mounted the scaffold; the executioner tied him to the plank, it tipped over, and the knife of the guillotine fell. He felt his head severed from his trunk, and awakened in terrible anxiety, only to find that the head-board of the bed had fallen, and had actually struck the cervical vertebrae just where the knife of the guillotine would have fallen." 
 
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