Morpheus, or, The future of sleep / by Professor D.F. Fraser-Harris.

  • David Fraser Fraser-Harris
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Morpheus, or, The future of sleep / by Professor D.F. Fraser-Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/102 page 12
    When in the course of time the curious condition of artificially induced sleep was discovered amid the chaos of the char¬ latanism of Mesmer, and a new name was required, James Braid, a Scottish surgeon in India, in 1843 coined for this state of artificial sleep the word “ hypno¬ tism ” from the ordinary Greek word for sleep, hupnos ”. From the original word, “ neuro-hypnotism ”, the “ neuro ” was dropped, for all sleep is neural in that it belongs to the nervous system. A hypnotic ” is, therefore, a drug which induces sleep. The medical term for sleeplessness is insomnia ”, derived from the two Latin words “ in ” not and “ somnus ” sleep. The fact is that healthy sleep is the result of the co-operation of several conditions or factors, as we may call them. The most obvious thing about sleep is that, while it lasts, we are un¬ conscious, dreaming being a more or less distinct interruption of this unconscious¬ ness. On its mental or psychical side, then, sleep is a regularly recurring state
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