SUBSTITUTE FOR SLEEP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23334, 28 October 1937, Page 21

SUBSTITUTE FOR SLEEP

STARTLING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY ~

In a lifetime of 70 years the average person sleeps 23 years, says a writer in the San Francisco Chronicle. How to eliminate all this waste time in some practical fashion, inn crease man's waking hours, and thus his earning ability, has been a problem which has intrigued scientists for years.

It was not so long ago that Irenee du Pont, of the Delaware du Ponts, made the startling prediction that science, before long, would evolve a chemical substitute for sleep. Scarcely had he made the prediction than Dr Wilbur D. Bancroft, of Cornell University, told the world about sodium rhodonate. This chemical, it turned out, if used in considerable quantities, staved off sleep indefinitely by preventing the hardening of the centres of consciousness. But it was not the kind of chemical that neutralised the body's fatigue poisons and left one as refreshed as slumber. So the only prospective customers were college students who wanted to stay awake for nights of cramming for an examination. Now comes the prediction that near at hand is the day when not a chemical, but electrical waves will be used to clear sleep-fogged brains. Not only will the electric treatment eliminate the necessity for so much sleep; it will actually increase human brain power, Dr Walter' B. Pitkin, of Columbia University, who made a bid for fame with his best seller, "Life Begins at Forty," is one of the outstanding prophets of the new "brain wave 1 ' era. He says: "With a rational imagination, and in the light of the history of similar developments in modern science, it is easy to see that our brain wave studies will lead to an electrical, or radio replacement "lerapy for the brain itself." However, in spite of all this talk about eventually doing away with sleep altogether, it turns out that there are just as many scientists trying to evolve substances and methods to make life worth living for insomniacs—those who can't sleep at all. Lord Nuffield, British motor car magnate, for example, was recently quoted by John Hilton, the Cambridge economist, as having declared he gets no more than one hour of actual a month. (He denied it.) At the other extreme there are ths narcoleptics—those who fall asleep s- r the slightest excuse, or for no obvious reason at all. There wasi the middle-aged Scotch farmer, brought tthe hospital with a fractured thigh During his convalescence he fell asleep after a meal. And since then he ha? been sleeping 22 out of 24 hours everr day.