Brain-rest / by J. Leonard Corning.

  • Corning J. Leonard (James Leonard), 1855-1923.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Brain-rest / by J. Leonard Corning. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Sometimes, after even slight mental exertion, they complain of an unendurable feeling of distention in the region of the vertex. I know of a man, employed as a nFght clerk in a hotel, who has long been a suf- ferer from insomnia, and who, when obliged to apply himself to the adjustment of the accounts, complains that he feels as if the top of his head were being blown off with gunpowder. This man has frequently attempted to resume employment during the day, and to sleep at night; but so accustomed has his system become to a complete reversal of the normal laws of rhythmical brain-rest and brain-activity, that he finds it totally impossible to obtain even an hour's sleep at night, and is consequently obliged to continue his irregular methods of living, his constitution, mean- while, steadily giving way. In no case is day sleep, however regularly indulged in, equal to that brain- repose which takes place under normal conditions with the supervention of darkness. But those whose occupations necessitate night work are, with few ex- ceptions, any thing but regular in their habits of sleep. As a rule, they pass but five or six hours during the day in actual sleep, the system remaining during the remainder of the time in but a semi-dor- mant condition. When sleeplessness has persisted for a considerable length of time, a state of chronic irritability is set up within the central nervous sys- tem. This irritable condition may be accompanied by circulatory derangements, which greatly enhance