On a theory of sleep / [John Ashburner].

  • Ashburner, John, 1793-1878
Date:
[1848?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On a theory of sleep / [John Ashburner]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE MESMERIC AND MAGNETIC FLUIDS, BY JOHN ASHBURNER, M.D. ON A THEORY OF SLEEP. The sensitive plant exhibits, under two different conditions, the opposite states of sleep and vigilance. Its contracted leaves are in a state of spasm,—a grasping, active, apparent quiescence ; and when its leaves are open and expanded, it is awake. These two opposite states are quite analogous to the sleep and vigilance of man. The phenomena of sleep have been so often noted, and so many definitions have been proposed as to its characteristics, that it would be difficult to find one which offered novelty. Yet the facts daily coming to light are so full of phy¬ siological interest, that to dive into the depths of what ap¬ pears so very occult need not be despaired of. When I first learned to believe that in the practice of mesmerism was to be found the cure for most of the intractable and hitherto incurable spasmodic diseases we are liable to, and when I found absolutely that by its aid more than epilepsy, hysteria, chorea, spasmodic asthma might be remedied/ I devoted my ingenuity to the means of discovering an agent which might assist us in obtaining the deep sleep so essential for our objects. To produce sleep by the ordinary means was a process, in many cases so tedious, that often sufferers had * It would not be too much to say that cancer and other malignant dis¬ eases have been wonderfully alleviated. Tubercular diseases, by which I mean consumption, scrofulous tumors, scrofulous caries of joints, have been arrested in their progress and brought nearer to a perfect cure than by any other treatment of which I know any thing. If medical men would study The Zoist instead of studying their privileges, they might learn to advance the knowledge of their profession. A