He
was put on the circuit jury three weeks ago, and counting to-day
has not slept for twenty days and nights. He eats and talks as
well as usual, and is full of business and activity. He does not
experience any bad effects whatever from the spell, nor did he
during his one hundred and thirty-one days. During that spell he
attended to all of his farm business. He says now that he feels
as though he never will sleep again. He does not seem to bother
himself about the prospects of a long and tedious wake. He cannot
attribute it to any one thing, but thinks that it was probably
superinduced by his use of tobacco while young."
Somnambulism, or, as it has been called, noctambulation, is a
curious phase of nocturnal cerebration analogous to the hypnotic
state, or double consciousness occasionally observed in
epileptics. Both Hippocrates and Aristotle discuss somnambulism,
and it is said that the physician Galen was a victim of this
habit. Horstius, ab Heers, and many others of the older writers
recorded interesting examples of this phenomenon. Schenck remarks
on the particular way in which somnambulists seem to escape
injury. Haller, Hoffmann, Gassendi, Caelius Rhodiginus, Pinel,
Hechler, Bohn, Richter,--in fact nearly all the ancient
physiologists and anatomists have written on this subject.
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