WHAT INSOMNIA IS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9098, 16 March 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

WHAT INSOMNIA IS.

Sir James Sawyer, the famous Birmingham physician, is' reporting m the 'British Aledical Journal' on the perplexing subject of insomnia. That scourge, which seems to attack by. preference the , keenest and brightest intellects, is, he shows, susceptible of analysis. Sleep m the first place is an appetite, like hunger and thirst. It consists of two distinct changes m the sleeper. One is a change m the tissue of the brain, another is a reduction m the supply of blood which feeds the brain. Insomnia is a brain disease due to the fact either that the brain has too much blood to allow its cells to sleep, or that by some pathological change the smaller arteries of the brain have lost the elasticity which permitted them to contract during sleep. This may be due to sudden shock, prolonged mental strom financial anxiety, or to tobacco, alcohol, tea, and coffee. Quite apart from drunkenness, there are often cases m which alcohol alone is the cause of insomnia. Tea leaves contain the alkaloid theme, and coffee an alkaloid caffeine, and the two have been shown to be chemically identical Both are apt to unduly stimulate the brain. In other cases insomnia is due to old age.