Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1892 — Going to Sleep. [ARTICLE]

Going to Sleep.

Scientific investigators assert that in beginning to sleep the senses do not unitedly fall into slumber, but drop off one after another. The sight ceases in consequence of the protection of the eyelids to receive impressions first, while all the other senses jpreserve their sensibility entire. The sense of taste is the next which loses its susceptibility to impression,, and then the sense of smelling. The hearing ft next in order, and last of all comes the sense of touch. Furthermore, the senses are brought to sleep with different degrees of profoundness. The sense of touch sleeps the most lightly and is the most easily awakened; the next easiest is the hearing, the next Is the sight, and the taste and smelling awake last Another remarkable circumstance deserves notice: certain muscles and parts of the body begin to sleep before others. Sleep commences at the extremities, beginning with the feet and legs, and creeping toward the center of the nervous action. The necessity of keeping the feet warm and perfectly still as a preliminary of sleep is well known. From these explanations it will not appear surprising that there should be ah imperfect kind of mental action which produces the phenomena of dreaming.