author
John Augustine Waller
A Royal Navy surgeon turned travel writer, he left vivid early-19th-century accounts of the Caribbean and also wrote about the strange world of nightmares and disturbed sleep. His books mix firsthand observation, medical curiosity, and the voice of someone who had seen empire up close.
1 Audiobook
A Treatise on the Incubus, or Night-Mare, Disturbed Sleep, Terrific Dreams and Nocturnal Visions
by John Augustine Waller
About the author
John Augustine Waller is known as a British surgeon and writer whose work connects medicine, travel, and colonial history. Records from library and catalog sources identify him as a surgeon in the Royal Navy who was assigned to the Naval Hospital in Barbados from 1807 to 1810.
He wrote A Voyage in the West Indies (1820), based on his time in Barbados and other Caribbean islands, including material on Paramaribo in Surinam. The book stands out today for its eyewitness descriptions of the region during the early 1800s and for the engravings associated with it.
Waller also wrote A Treatise on the Incubus, or Night-Mare (1816), an early medical work on disturbed sleep, terrifying dreams, and nocturnal visions. Together, his surviving books suggest a writer interested both in careful observation and in unusual subjects that still feel surprisingly modern.