HOW WE GO TO SLEEP.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 491, 14 August 1912, Page 7

HOW WE GO TO SLEEP.

How do we go to sleep ? How does mother nature charm away our consciousness ? First of all. she throws her spell over those centres of our bodies that preside over the muscular system, causing one group of muscles after another gradually to collapse. Thereafter various powers of mind succumb in regular order. First we lose attention and judgment. Then memory goes, and imagination wanders away in revelries Df its own. Ideas of time and space cease to control thought as gentle sleep—the nurse of our life—draws nearer. Then comes the turn of the sptfeial senses, beginning with eight—eyelids close and eyeballs turn upward and forward, as if to shut out all light, the pupils contracting more and more as slumber steals over us. The turn of the ear comes—th 3 power of hearing fades away. The heart beats and breath is drawn more and more slowly. The heart beats from ten to twenty times less frequently each minute, or live thousand times less during the night, while breathing is not only slower, but much more shallow than during waking hours. Temperature falls by perhaps two degrees, and the body loses three times less heat than when awake. And so at last sleep covers a man all over —sleep that shuts up sorrow's eye.—London "Express."