Sickness dreams include your own illness, a relative in bed, and nursing a stranger. Note the symptoms the dream chose and any real ailment behind them.
Which version was yours?
Being diagnosed by a stranger with a disease you do not recognise
Record the name the dream gave, even if it was nonsense, and the stranger's manner. Then check whether a health story, a test, or a relative's news has been on your mind.
Nursing a sick relative whose condition keeps changing
Note what you were doing for them and what kept going wrong. Carers often dream of the task slipping; writing the specific failure can show where the real strain sits.
Being ill and nobody believing you
Write down who dismissed you and what you were trying to say. Then ask whether a need of yours, not necessarily medical, has gone unheard recently.
A way to think about it
Sickness dreams sit close to the body, and that is the first place to look. A rising temperature, a sore throat, an upset stomach, or the early hours of a real infection can all be felt before they are recognised, and the dreaming mind may dramatise them as a hospital, a bed you cannot leave, or a diagnosis delivered by a stranger. If the dream recurs with the same symptom, it is reasonable to mention it to a doctor, without assuming the dream knows anything. Beyond the body, illness in a dream can picture a loss of capacity: being unable to work, to keep up, to be relied upon. Note whether you were the sick one or the carer. Dreams of tending a sick parent, partner, or child are common among people already doing that in waking life, and the dream often adds a twist, a wound that will not close, a medicine that spills, that shows where the strain is. Dreams of your own illness being ignored by others, or of nobody believing you are unwell, can be a way of picturing a need that is not being taken seriously. Write down the named disease if the dream gave one, since that word often links to something read, heard, or feared recently.
Take a question into your day.
Save it before it slips away. No account needed.
STORIES & CONTEXTThe stories behind the symbol
The stories behind the symbol
Six archive books cover sickness. The 1644 Artemidorus translation says it is good only for captives and the very poor, since it thins and quickens the body, and otherwise means idleness and lack of work; dreaming of a sick friend, he adds, concerns the friend rather than the dreamer. Noe (1885) repeats the idleness reading and calls comforting the sick profitable. Miller (1901) sees family trouble and real illness. Fontaine (1862) reverses it: recovering from a long sickness brings bad luck, dying of one brings fortune. Cielo (1917) calls illness always a bad sign; Craig (1918) pairs it with imprisonment, and attending the sick with joy. Period beliefs, not diagnoses.
Compare the historical accounts
These are the authors’ historical interpretations. Their forecasts and period judgments are preserved as source material, not as predictions or established meanings for your dream.
Gustavus Hindman Miller
Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What’s in a Dream · Gutenberg #926; bibliography identifies the 1901 original and subsequent reprints
Sickness · Heading 1844; source lines 20443–20455 · Text transcription
Original source (English)
To dream of sickness, is a sign of trouble and real sickness in your family. Discord is sure to find entrance also.
To dream of your own sickness, is a warning to be unusually cautious of your person.
To see any of your family pale and sick, foretells that some event will break unexpectedly upon your harmonious hearthstone. Sickness is usually attendant upon this dream.
Felix Fontaine
The Golden Wheel Dream-book and Fortune-teller · 1862
Sickness · Heading 722; source line 4509 · Text transcription
Original source (English)
(See Disease.) If you dream you have had a long sickness, and are recovering, it foretells bad luck and difficulties: should you imagine that you are sick and are going to die, the omen is the reverse, for some good fortune awaits you: if a girl dreams that she is sick abed, and her lover visits her, it foretells a smooth courtship and happy marriage.
Artemidorus; English translation attributed to Robert Wood
The Interpretation of Dreams · 1644; EEBO-TCP A25906 transcription
Of Sicknesse. · Book 3, encoded section 132 · Text transcription
Original source (English)
To be sick, is good onely to those which are in captivity or great poverty, for sicknesse makes active and lean, and diminisheth the booy: to others it is great idlenesse and want of work. It is the same case to dream that you visit a sick man, which you know signifyeth that the event shall happen to to him, not to the dreamer: For we hold, that our friends, neighbours, and familiars, are the fantasies and images which represent things that are to befall us. Especially, I have observed that all the good or evill things which the soul would signifie to us betimes, and of greater importance, she brings and represents them in our own person: but those things which she denounceth more slowly, and of lesse apparance, she represents them by some other.
The source heading “Sicknesse” is shown on the Sickness page: archaic spelling (Artemidorus)
View source editionA. H. Noe
The Witches' Dream Book; and Fortune Teller · New York, Henry J. Wehman, 1885
Sickness · Dream section, heading 458; source lines 1685–1687 · Text transcription
Original source (English)
To dream one is sick, signifies idleness and want of work. To dream one comforts the sick, and prescribes them medicine, denotes profit and felicity.
Astra Cielo
Fortunes and Dreams · New York, George Sully, 1917
Sickness · Dream section, heading 383; source lines 4787–4789 · Text transcription
Original source (English)
To dream of being ill is always a bad sign.
Katherine Taylor Craig
The Fabric of Dreams: Dream Lore and Dream Interpretation, Ancient and Modern · New York, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1918; original US edition
Sickness · Printed p. 253; NLM OCR lines 11918–11920 · OCR transcription
Original source (English)
To dream of being sick, illness or imprisonment; to dream of attending the sick, joy and virtue.
Also indexed as: of sicknesse · illness · being ill · being sick · disease · getting sick
Original DreamFolia editorial draft written on 2026-10-12. Reflection text is an invitation to personal writing, not a validated symbol meaning. Individual editorial review is required before publication. Updated 2026-10-12. Read our approach and sources.