MYSTERY OF SLEEP.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5079, 24 January 1927, Page 3

MYSTERY OF SLEEP.

AWAITING SCIENTIFIC PROBING.

It is strange that the phenomenon of sleep, which occupies about half our lives, should still await its scientific explanation (writes Dr. Leonard Williams in the- London Daily Chronicle). Certain things in connection with this elusive state are nevertheless generally accepted-: That it is accompanied by a relative, anaemia o'i the brain, for example. That is why mental worry and excitement, which cause a relative, congestion in the same area, are among the greatest enemies of sleep. The. celebrated American surgeon, Dr. Crile, has shown that a brain which for long periods has been deprived of sleep loses from its cells a substance which is essential to vital activity, and that this can be restored by sleep' and by sleep only. What that substance is, how it is made, and what becomes o'f it, no man know'eth. Not even Dr. Crile can tell us, though it is probable that one day he will do so. Another curious thing about sleep is that when artificially induced insomnia causes much more rapid loss of flesh than deprivation of food. I cannot, at the moment, get at the details of the experiments which established these, facts, but I recall enough of them to say that the power of insomnia to bring about the melting of solid flesh is really startling. Fat people often declare that they are martyrs to insomnia, but I am inclined to believe that the sleeplessness from which they suffer is an effort on the part of Nature to redress the balance of their superfluous and burdensome flesh. Natural physiological sleep may be observed in any wholesome child who is still unspotted by the retention of toxic material. Natural sleep is a state o'f complete unconsciousness which is instant and irresistible.

As people get older and learn to like such poisons as meats, tobacco, and alcohol, they begin, some of them, to experience insomnia ; others, from much the same causes, experience somnolence. Most modifications of physiological sleep, whether in the direction of too little or too much, are due to poisons generated in the system. And these poisons, like those in the chemist’s shop, may be either irritant or sedative; one sort will keep you awake, the other sort will keep you asleep. In either case, the first thing to do is to get rid of the offending poison by physiological means. To try and neutralise it by introducing another poison 'from without is the. best way of establishing seven devils in the place o'f a donkey. About insomnia there still hangs the glamour of the inscrutable. All diseases were formerly believed to be due to the direct persona} intervention bf the Diety, and, although this theory no onger holds where such diseases as typhoid fever and emasles are concerned, it certainly holds, and holds fast, where troubles of the nervous system are concerned. Insomnia is surely the commonest affection of the nervous system, and truly devastating it often is. The best metliol of dealing with it is not by self pity and self drugging, but by the expedient suggested by the result O'f Professor Pavlov’s experience with dogs. The great Russian physiologist accussomed his animals to associate the ringing of a certain bell with the approach of meal-time. Then one day the bell was duly rung, but the food failed to arrive, and the disappointed animals immediately fell asleep. Fasting is very properly extolled in a variety of maladies. This experiment, which was frequently repeated and always with the same result, goes to show that a very simple and inexpensive remedy for insomnia, is within the reach of everyone. When Samuel Johnson signed one of his famous letters to Lord Chesterfield “Yours impransus,” it is safe, to assupie that the sage slept soundly on that occasion.