ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 467 



Certain facts indicate that sleep is more necessary than food. 

 It is possible to fast four to five weeks, but enforced deprivation 

 of sleep kills in a few days. Montaigne relates how Perseus, king 

 of Macedonia, a prisoner in Kome, was done to death by want of 

 sleep. And there are well-attested facts from experiments on 

 animals which illustrate the fatal effects of enforced wakefulness. 

 Bordoni - Uffreduzzi cites the case of three healthy boys who 

 vowed that they would not sleep for a week, and resorted to 

 various ways of keeping themselves awake. One of them on the 

 fourth day fell asleep suddenly after a gymnastic exercise ; so did 

 the second on the fifth day ; the third died of nervous exhaustion 

 at the beginning of the seventh day while out riding. The origin 

 of this story is unknown. 



The pathological effects of prolonged complete insomnia are of 

 great interest. Two cases were published by Agostini (1898) : one 

 a mechanic aged 45, who for six days and nights attended to the 

 direction of his machine, owing to the absence of the companion 

 who should have relieved him ; the other, a young servant who 

 attended to her sick mistress for many nights without taking any 

 rest during the day. In both cases the symptoms were acute 

 transitory amentia, with delirium, hallucinations, mental confusion, 

 dulling of consciousness, and amnesia. 



Weir Mitchell (1898) quoted 18 cases, the majority being 

 students who sat up when preparing for examinations. They 

 exhibited phenomena of grave insomnia with cerebral excitation, 

 or of drowsiness prolonged for eight weeks, etc. 



According to the researches of Dr. Marie de Manaceine (1894), 

 Daddi (1898), and others, on dogs that died after enforced insomnia, 

 marked disseminated alterations can be seen in the nerve-cells of 

 the brain and spinal cord, and in the intervertebral ganglia. 



The results of recent experiments by Legendre and Pieron 

 (1911-12) are more accurate. In dogs kept awake till they showed 

 an imperative need of sleep, there were alterations in the pyramidal 

 nerve-cells in the motor region of the brain (chromatolysis, deforma- 

 tion of cell body, etc.). These lesions disappeared entirely if the 

 animal was allowed to sleep. The urgent need of sleep after 

 artificially prolonged wakefulness is according to these authors 

 correlated with the development of a hypnotoxic property in the 

 tissue-fluids, which when injected into the fourth ventricle of 

 normal dogs produces the cellular lesions characteristic of insomnia 

 as well as desire to sleep. This hypnotoxic action is more pro- 

 nounced in the cerebro-spinal and cerebral fluids than in blood- 

 serum. In all probability, therefore, it depends on the katabolites 

 of cerebral activity. 



These observations and experiments agree with the chemical 

 theory of sleep, according to which fatigue, and the organic kata- 

 bolisni due to functional activity in the waking state, are the cause 



