HOW YOU GO TO SLEEP, AND WHY YOU DREAM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3765, 14 May 1907, Page 4

HOW YOU GO TO SLEEP, AND WHY YOU DREAM.

It lias been ascertained that, in beginning to sleep, the senses do not unitedly fall into a state of slumber, but drop off one after the other. The sight ceases, in consequence of the protection of the eyelids, to receive impressions first, while all the other senses preserve their sensibility entire. The sense of taste is the next which loses its susceptibility to impressions, and then the sense of smelling. The hearing is next in order, and last of all comes the sense of thought. Further more, senses are thought to sleep with different degrees, of profoundness. The sense of touch, sleeps the most lightly, and is the most easily awakened ; the next easiest is the hearing, the next is the sight; and the taste and the smelling awake last. Another remarkable circumstance deserves notice; certain muscles and parts of the body begin to sleep before others. Sleep commences at the extremities, beginning with the feet and legs, and creeping towards the centre of nervous action. The necessity for keeping the feet warm and perfectly still as a preliminary of sleep is well-known. From these explanations it will not appear surprising that, with one or more of the senses, and perhaps also of one or more parts of the body imperfectly asleep, there should be at the same time an imperfect kind of mental action, which produces the phenomenon of dreaming.