INSOMNIA ON A GRAND SCALE

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 September 1938, Page 5

INSOMNIA ON A GRAND SCALE

FIT AND “EATS LIKE A HORSE.” LONDON, August 6. A man who says he never sleeps longer than three seconds at a time is puzzling fhe medical world. He is Joe Day. an Oxford grocer, aged fifty-ine.

Every night he goes to bed longing for real sleep. But always it. eludes him. He rests for an hour, and then has to get up again. “I take my sleep in small doses,” he says. “I know it is never for more than, three seconds.”

“Sometimes when I am having a pint of beer I feel lired and close my eyes. Then the. tiredness goes and I arn all right, again.”

Despite his insomnia—a legacy of the Avar —Mr Day has good health, and to use his own words, “an appetite like a horse.” “Nobody can tell mo why 1 cannot sleep,” he complains. “Doctors have treated me, hut. none have been, successful. Now I don't ga to them. Sometimes' f used to doze tvhen riding my bicycle. I fell off about twelve times, so now I do not cycle very far. Some nights I go out into the woods. If is the best way Io spend the hours of darkness." Tn his early days Mr Day was a crack cyclist, and a run nor.