Sleep and Its Derangements

. Many persons are rendered irritable as soon as they become sleepy, and children are especially liable to manifest ill temper under the uncomfortable feelings they exp

doubtless due to a like cause-a deficient quantity of blood in the brain. Along with this languor there is a general obtuseness of all the senses, which increases the separation of the mind from the external world, already initiated by the physical condition of the brain. The liveliest scenes cease to engage the attention, and the most exciting conversation no longer interests. For a time

before those which support the head, and the latter before those which maintain the erectness of the back. This, however, is not always the case, for, as we have already seen, individuals will occasionally walk, and keep their position

light. Even when the eyelids have been removed, or from disease cannot be closed, the sight, nevertheless, is the first of the special senses to be abolished. Some

touch yields last of all, and is most readily re-excited. To awake a sleeping person, impressions made upon the sense of touch are more effectual than attempts

a diminution of the pulmonary exhalations. In all probability, also, the ciliated epithelium which lines the air-passages functionates with reduced activity. O

istributed to distant parts of the body so thoroughly and rapidly as during wakefulness, and accordingly the extremities readily lose their heat. Owing to the redu

ch leaves the brain, goes, as Durham has shown, to the stomach and other abdominal viscera, and hence the quanti

he individual is awake and engaged in mental or physical employ

just as would any other mental or bodily exertion. This circumstance has led some writers to a conclusion the reverse of that just expressed. Others, again, have accepte

hat in the space of seven hours, fifty ounces of the concoct

t, insensibly, healthfully, and without any vio

ivision between the loss by this channel and that which takes place through the lungs, for by perspiration in the above quotations he means not only the exhalation from the skin, but the

d thus ulcers heal with more rapidity, owing to the increased formation of granulations which takes place; but the removal of tumors, etc. by natural process involves the operation of forces the very opposite of those concerned in reparation, and observation teaches us that sleep is a condition peculiarly favor

hysician who has had much to do with cases of the kind knows that sleeping upon the back, by which means the blood gravitates to the generative organs and to the lower part of the spinal cord, will often give rise to seminal emissions with or without erotic dreams, and that such occurrences may generally be prevented by the individual avoidi

ulism is clearly a condition of exaltation in the functions of the spinal cord without the controlling influence of the cerebrum being brought into action. But, aside from this rather abnormal phenomenon, there are others which are entirely within the range of health, and which show that the spinal cord is aw

ng during sleep show the activity of the spinal cord, and not that the will is exercised; an

like those just re

ensations that a sleeping man moves his arm to brush away the flies from his face, that he draws the cover around him so as to envelop himself carefully, or that he turns in bed til

instances of reflex action, and as not, the

d not his condition been accidentally discovered. Bleeding from the lungs is also more apt to occur during sleep in those who are predisposed to it. Darwin states that a man of about fifty years of age, subject to h?morrhoids, was also attacked with h?moptysis three consecutive nights at about the same hour-two o'clock-being awakened t

ingly pale just before the fit, and if then seen the paroxysm can be entirely prevented by waking her. She is never attacked at other times, and I am trying, with excellent results thus far, the plan of making her sleep altogether during the day and of waking her as soon as her face becomes pallid. It is pr

iseases which it is scarcely necessary to allude to specifically. The accession of fever toward night, and the increase which ta

d nightmare, which have a necessary relation with sleep

vulsive or spasmodic character. Thus the paroxysms of chorea cease during sleep, as do likewise the spasms of