SLEEP AND DEATH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9042, 24 September 1907, Page 2

SLEEP AND DEATH.

A SCIENTIFIC ESTIMATE.

The phenomenon called sleep may be summed up in the following propositions, says a writer in the ' ' Cosmopolitan " : —

" First: Sleep is the temporary death of the functions of the sensitive system, due to exhaustion by fatigue. Secondly: This death is temporary because the vital system continues to perform its functions during eleep and restores the sensitive organs to their normal condition. For our purpose death may be considered under the three heads— natural death, sudden death, and death from disease. Natural death is death from old age. It differs from natural sleep only in degree. The gradual loss of sensibility by the sensitive organs which precedes sleep now takes place in the vital system, and all the organs pass into permanent sleep together. There can be no pain preceding or at the moment of such a death, any more than there is pain preceding and at the ■ moment of passing into temporary sleep. Sudden death may be defined as death due to a sudden injury from without or within the body sufficient to destroy at once all irritability of both the sensitive and vital systems. It requires no argument to prove that a person who is suddenly stricken dead can suffer no pain. The element of time must be present in order to suffer physical pain, and in the sudden death of a person the element of time is absent. " We come now to consider the third and by far the most frequent form of death,* namely, death from disease. As soon as disease is established, dying begins, which is but a more rapid than natural ceasing of all sensibilities, _ accompanied with more or lees suffering, according to the cause which produces it. This dying and suffering, called tUfr«ase must terminate either in so-called death, which is insensibility to it. or in recovery, which is removal of the cause of it. But, *n any event, the suffering Vi:is been endured, no matter whether the Anal termination is death or recov""No one is conscious of or can recall the moment he passes from waking into natural or temporary sleep. Nor shall we, by a " supreme agony," or in any other way, be conscious of passing into permanent sleep. Being born ,and dying are the two most important physiological events in the life history of our bodies, and we shall know no more about the latter event at the time it occurs than we did about the former.