Sleep and sleeplessness / [J. Mortimer Granville].

  • Granville, J. Mortimer (Joseph Mortimer), 1833-1900
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sleep and sleeplessness / [J. Mortimer Granville]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sensitive person is not so constituted. His compound nature is, so to say, less closely knit. When one organ needs rest the others are not so easily lured to repose. It is the practice to think and speak as though the sympathetic relations between the several parts of the body and mind of a highly sensitive person were more intimate than those which obtain in robust and rude natures. I believe this is a mis- take, and the error comes out strongly in respect to the matter of sleeping. There is the clearest evidence of want of natural sympathy when the weariness and sleepiness of one part of the apparatus of life does not communicate itself to the others. The truth is that those natures we call “ sensitive ” are morbidly excitable, because there is a want of equilibrium between their several component parts. Some one ele- ment of the physico-mental constitution is developed out of proportion to the rest and establishes closer relations with the mind, through the sense-organs, than those which connect it with other parts of the organism. Health and integrity of constitution imply equality of growth ; and although it is possible, and should be the aim of training, to secure this equality in a high state of intellectual and bodily perfection, it is more commonly found in those who live rough lives, passing a great deal of their time