The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-05-05
MANNER OF SLEEP
 UNSOLVED MYSTERY
HYRienic Gazette.l

There is no surer way of produclns
 leep than by fatigufng conscious at- tention. Various theories of sleep have been advanced. Some ascrioe it to the influence of some one organ or tissue, such as the thyroid gland or the basal cerebral ganglia-
 Fleming reports having produced sleep by deep compression of the carotid arteries. But in this case unconsciousness was confused with normal sleep. But that cerebral one, of the factors causing sleep IS proved by the fact that it always pre- cedes sleep.
 It is safe to say that three clements enter into natural sleep: fatigue, which causes lessened irritability: withdrawing from anything that Will stimulate hearing or sight or any ex, ternal sensation, and a diminished blood supply to the brain. In this matter the yawn is of interest.
 It is excited by loss of attention. We all can remember being very sleepy and .'yawning our heads off. /" Then when something has happened to excite our interest we became wide awake in an instant and couldn't t have yawned if we had tried.
 Sleep then is the resting of con- sciousness; that is. of the self-con- sciousness or acute realization of the ego. Persons in whom this sort of consciousness Is least active would naturally therefore be the one who sleep most. And this we find to be true. Children, the uneducated, idiots and So on. all sleep more than the average number of hours.
 It is possible that this may explain the we'll known observation that the older a person grows the less sleep he requires. The older he grows the more and more does he remove cer- tain acts from the direction of his active. conscious mind and relegate and executed.
 Old men who preserve. their con- sciousness in full vigor are usually the subjects of insomnia. While those in whom conscious effort and< desire is gradually 1essened sleep more and more. This is in support of the theory; as the older a man grows the less does he make demands on his conscious efforts and consequently the less rest he requires.
 Loss of sleep or insomnia may be due to variety of causes. Broken sleep is most often found in nervous or hysterical persons or those tempor- arily in a similar condition. Most cases of insomnia belong to this class
  not to take too seriously the state nents of these patients in regard to this complaint.
 It is one of the hardest of things for any person to estimate the exact amount of the time that he has con- sumed in sleep. One may sleep for some time and on waking find it hard to convince himself that he has lost more than few moments. Cases of complete insomnia are, however, met and they quickly terminate in death. :.
 A central degree of cerebral anae-7 mia is necessary to sleep. Conversely 1t may be seen that an unusual flow of blood to the brain will produce in somnia. Also pronounced degree of anaemia will also produce insomnia Excessive mental or physical fatigue may also produce insomnia Insuffi- cient covering of the body will pro- duce insomnia by inducing cerebral congestion.
 It is easy enough to fall into habit of needless sleep at certain hours and under certain conditions. Excessive sleep may do bodily harm as through Its power of vessel dilation it is fol- lowed by various disturbances of the system.
 The various perceptions that obtain in dreams may be classed as visual, auditory. etc. Of these the visual are by far more vivid. Dreams are said to occur most in the morning and probably do, but there is a Likelihood that in the deeper sleep of middle night they are present. but do not make so much of an impression. Dreams are of two distinct classes: those caused by some external stimu- lus and those originating in the mem ories of the cerebrum without any to be found origin.