ABSENCE OF SLEEP.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20485, 11 December 1934, Page 5

ABSENCE OF SLEEP.

“Not an Hour in Five Years.” STRANGE RESULT OF ACCIDENT. Mr George Kenneth Best, aged 25 years, of Kenton, Middlesex, says he has not slept for five years. On his twentieth birthday Mr Best took a new motor-cycle out for a trial spin. He came into collision with a lorry, and was spun over the handlebars, landing on his head. “ I have not slept, even for an hour, for nearly five years,” Mr Best said on October 27. “ I was unconscious for twelve days after the accident and awoke with a terrible pain in my head. Gradually it subsided, until today I have only a recurrence about once a month. Doctors cannot give me a minute of natural sleep. “ Every night I go to bed, but I spend the night reading, mostly detective novels. Otherwise I live a perfectly normal life. Doctors often tell me that I should have died years ago.” A medical authority on nervous disorders said that similar cases were not unknown. “ A person normally cannot live without sleep. What happens is that certain injuries to the brain result in the failure of the individual to register his lapse into that unconscious stage which is sleep. “ The sleep actually does occur, but the eyes of the person remain open, and when he ‘ wakes ’ he takes up life again where he lapsed into coma. Usually such people require a minimum i of rest.”