INSOMNIA;

AND OTHER

Disorders of Sleep.

BY
HENRY M. LYMAN, A.M., M.D.,
Professor of Physiology, and of Diseases of the Nervous System, in Rush Medical
College; Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine, in the
Woman’s Medical College; and Physician to the
Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago, Ill.

CHICAGO:
W. T. KEENER,
96 WASHINGTON STREET.
1885.

COPYRIGHT, 1885.

R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS, PRINTERS, CHICAGO.

[Pg iii]

PREFACE.

The regularly recurring incidence of natural sleep forms one of the mostimportant subjects for physiological investigation. Were it an event ofrare occurrence, it would excite a degree of astonishment and alarm equalto the agitation now experienced by the spectator of an ordinary attack ofsyncope or of epileptic convulsion. But, so completely does the recurrenceof sleep harmonize with all the other facts of life that we are asindifferent to its nature as we are to every other healthy function of thebody. It is only when the mind has undertaken a critical observation ofthe bodily and mental changes which accompany and condition the phenomenonthat we begin to comprehend its wonderful character. Ushered in by awaning activity of body and mind that no effort of the will can longresist, nothing could more forcibly suggest the idea of approachingdissolution if, from the very earliest period of unconscious infancy, wehad not been accustomed to the dominion of this imperious necessity. Theremarkable likeness between the fading of consciousness in sleep and itsextinction[Pg iv] in death has, in all ages and among all people, arrested theattention of poets and philosophers of every degree.

Soft repose,
A living semblance of the grave,

sang old Thomas Miller; and, describing, in Milton’s stately verse, theclose of his first day in the garden of Eden, Adam says:

Gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seized
My drowsy sense, untroubled, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.

How wonderful is death,
Death and his brother, Sleep!

exclaims Shelley, echoing the marvellous strains that have come down to usfrom the days of Homer and Hesiod. In that venerable literature Sleep andDeath are represented as twin brothers, sons of Night; dwelling in thelower world of spirits, whence they come forth to perform the will of theOlympian Gods.

The prosaic genius of our scientific generation no longer tolerates suchlively exercise of the imagination. The splendid anthropomorphism of theHebrew poet, looking out upon the silent night, and cheering his soul withthe sonorous exclamation,

Behold, he that keepeth Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep
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