Excerpt from The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 27: A Quarterly International Records of Educational Literature Institutions and Progress; 1920
It is a remarkable thing that we know little about the most fundamental processes in our daily life, activities vital and essential to our health and happiness. Particularly is this true of the phenomenon of sleep. All sorts of theories have prevailed in regard to it; some of them absurd; some of the recent ones extremely illuminating.
If we look at the whole matter objectively, as we might imagine a being doing in some other planet where sleep is unnecessary, if we take such an objective view, we may naturally ask, is this a stupid habit into which the human race has fallen, just as some animals indulge in a hibernal sleep from lack of stimulation, or is it an essential condition for health and normal activity? The answer to this question is simple, and has been given definitely and concretely, not only by the observation of the race, but by recent investigations that have shown poisonous products present in the nervous system under conditions of prolonged wakefulness.
If one should speak of a condition in which the temperature of the body is decreased, the pulse and respiration retarded, the eyeballs rolled upward, the pupils small, fatigue and relaxation of the muscles apparent, the eyelids heavy, consciousness obscured or lost as in narcosis, then it would seem, as one writer has suggested, as if one were trying to describe a morbid condition, as appears in some cases of acute poisoning; and yet, it is a physiological condition; namely, sleep. The poet is not far wrong in calling sleep the image of death.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 27 (G. Stanley Hall)