Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/438

434 favored by the removal of all that may excite either the attention or the reflexes. Darkness, quiet, bodily comfort and mental serenity are therefore sought. Sleep may be prevented by any of the contrary conditions—light, noise, pain or anxiety. When it is necessary to contend against drowsiness, one instinctively seeks objects for attention or sensory stimulation, such as may be secured by taking a slightly uncomfortable position. Evidently sleep presupposes a release of the brain from many stimuli and may be warded off by seeing to it that no such release is granted. There is on record the case of an unfortunate boy who had no cutaneous sensibility, was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. His mentality was of a low order. To cause him to sleep it was only necessary to cover the serviceable eye and ear for a few moments. Here the waking condition was clearly dependent on an unceasing flow of sensory impulses into the brain. A person of higher intelligence, similarly afflicted, would doubtless sleep much less readily, for trains of thought might keep him awake in default of external stimuli.

The approach of sleep is accompanied by distinct vascular changes. The blood stream is shifting its bed. A most imperious summons to sleep comes from the dryness of the eyes, the sign, probably, of a lessened blood-flow through the tear glands. At the same time the temperature of the skin rises, possibly excepting that of the extremities. There is evidence then of a dilatation of the cutaneous vessels as sleep comes on, and the final passage into unconsciousness is accompanied by a considerable further dilatation. These vascular changes have been nicely gauged by what is known as the plethysmographic method, where the subject lay with one hand and forearm fixed in a glass cylinder filled with water. An increase of blood in the arm displaced water from the cylinder and a delicate recording apparatus showed how this dilatation came on with sleep and passed off with waking. An account of such experiments, of more than technical interest, is that contributed by Dr. W. H. Howell to The Journal of Experimental Medicine (Vol. II.).

It is generally inferred that the cutaneous dilatation at once reduces the general blood-pressure and the quantity of blood flowing through the brain, by diverting a large share to the skin. The lowering of pressure has been demonstrated by Brush and Fayerweather; the fact that there is anemia of the brain during sleep has been established by direct observation. An English physiologist. Hill, has been led to believe that the dilatation of blood-vessels that relieves the brain in sleep is not limited to the skin, but shared by the arteries of the digestive tract. That this is so is difficult to prove, but it is suggestive that a heavy meal is followed by a long sleep in the case of the lower animals and often with us by a hard struggle with drowsiness.