SLEEP AND BRAIN REST.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2231, 23 July 1891, Page 3

SLEEP AND BRAIN REST.

How long does our “first sleep” last? Sir James Crichton Browne,’ continuing his lectures at the Midland Institute on “ Brain Rest,” told his hearers that ordinary sleep grows deeper for the first hour and a-half then steadly diminishes untill the slumberer awakens. Dr Browne pleads for eight hours for actively working brains, through ascetic notions have led many people to shorten the time, with the result that in certain cases it has been proved that the amount of sleep may be reduced considerably without injury. Literary men are apt to starve the brain in the matter of sleep; but some, nevertheless, have got on pretty well in spite of insomnia. Carlyle and Rossetti furnish instances. Dr Browne quoted a letter from his friend, Dr Tyndall, who says;—“ For four weeks I never had a single second of sleep, and during those nights I walked thousands of times round my room to no purpose. What astonishes me above all (he adds) is, notwithstanding my night’s weariness, my brain power does not appear to be sensibly impaired. After two or three hours’ sleep I felt my brain as strong and clear as it ever was at any period of my life.” It was in Sir J. Crichton Browne’s opinion, impossible to doubt that nutrition and repair must, have gone on in the brain during periods of sleeplessness. The brain, in short, must, as he expresses it, “ have learnt the trick of the heart, and gone to sleep during the beats, or it must have slept in centres which were not active at the same time.”