Drowsiness

“ Later on he became restless and was startled into partial wakefulness. The one word "beware"—was faintly whispered, but drowsiness overcame his effort to understand although he rolled and tossed from side to side. ”

“ Often, as little things, after romping all day, the enforced sitting would be too much for us, and our drowsiness would soon show itself in continued nods. Then, to arouse, us, he had a way of stirring us up with his foot—laughing heartily at and with us. ”

“ Sleep is impossible after all that I have heard, so, after vainly endeavoring to follow the example of the rest, and sleep like a Stoic, I have lighted my candle and take to this to induce drowsiness. ”

“ I was very glad to see most of our own people at school and prayers, but I believe some have reserved the ‘nightcap’ till nearer bed-time. When the drowsiness is over I believe a craving for food results, and then the appetite is appeased even if it be in the middle of the night. Certainly, however, a man is never quarrelsome over his cups, but a drowsiness and torpor creep over the most quarrelsome and irrepressive after the draught. ”

“ They think, always, that they only wish to rest themselves, and sleep a few minutes, and that then they will be refreshed, and be ready to proceed on their journey. But they are deceived. The drowsiness is produced, not by the fatigue, but by the cold. ”

“ This was not very fast, for an unaccountable drowsiness was stealing over them.
Slowly and more slowly, the tired little girl and her great four-footed companion advanced toward the dimly lighted gate. They were so drowsy that they had ceased to talk. ”

“ Famished for want of food, tortured with thirst that snow would not relieve, racked in every bone and muscle with the awful pain of extreme fatigue, and not daring to halt for fear of the drowsiness that fought the fatigue and presaged death, with the name of God often on their lips—but not in prayer—they degenerated in two nights and a day into a couple of unreasoning wild beasts ”

“ They suffer also from great drowsiness, from a disagreeable sense of weight or pressure in the head, from a feeling “as if the brain was clouded, or needed to have some cobwebs swept away.” They feel a disinclination to both mental and physical exertion, and their memory and all other intellectual powers are impaired. ”

“ But I have known more than one sailor who has been cast away in these dreary latitudes, and they have told me that there is a kind of fever which attacks every one at first, its most notable symptoms being lethargy, drowsiness, and great depression of spirits, but that being once acclimatised, it never comes again. ”

“ The subjects attacked by it suffer no pain whatever, but fall into a continual heavy drowsiness or sleep, having to be awakened to be fed, and at last become unable to eat at all, or stand, and die fast asleep as it were. ”

“ The sensations derived from the inward organs are also distinctly more or less voluminous. Repletion and emptiness, suffocation, palpitation, headache, are examples of this, and certainly not less spatial is the consciousness we have of our general bodily condition in nausea, fever, heavy drowsiness, and fatigue. ”

“ That fatigue, primarily an organic state, gives rise to fatigue sensations and to a neural adjustment for rest--a disinclination to work any longer--and that drowsiness is a somewhat different organic state that gives an inclination to sleep--all this has been sufficiently set forth in earlier chapters. Going to sleep is a definite act, an instinctive response to the drowsy state. In the way of preparatory reactions, we find many interesting performances in birds and mammals, such as the curling up of the dog or cat to sleep, the roosting of hens, the standing on one leg of some birds ”

“ When one has drunk of the juice of the poppy drowsiness comes on, with coldness and intense itching, so that often when the medicine takes effect such an itching comes on that the person is roused from sleep thereby. ”

“ When giddiness, sleepiness, chilliness, confusion of thought, weariness, head-ache, pains in the limbs, unusual sounds in the ears, sparks before the eyes, loss of appetite, oppression after food, feverishness, thirst, languor, depression of spirits, inability to sleep at the usual hour, malaise or, in fact, any uncomfortable feeling, not previously felt, occurs soon after drinking the waters, and especially after bathing, and if these, or any of these recur after the second or third day, let the waters be suspended till advice is taken. ”

“ The sky has burst and all the rain in the sky is pelting down.... He is shivering with cold and fever. And suddenly he feels his little bare foot stepping on something warm and soft .... It is blood, clotted blood....
He no longer dares to move forwards or backwards. He stands with his teeth chattering and all the clatter of the rain around him.... But he must wake his father, take refuge with him, hide himself in his arms and sob and sob with fright! ”

“ He becomes stricken with grief, sheds tears, suffers from headache, feels his heart throb -or perhaps suddenly a storm blows, he is drenched in rain and becomes wet and cold. He wakes up and laughs at his illusory dream experience. ”

“ In the first place, it is to be remarked that persons who have come so near drowning as to be unconscious when taken from the water, and so must have passed through all the suffering that attends death by drowning, say that they remember no feeling of pain whatever. ”

“ I wake up in the best spirits, with an inclination to sing in my throat. Why? I go down by the side of the water, and suddenly, after walking a short distance, I return home [Pg 86] wretched, as if some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me low spirits? Is it the form of the clouds, or the colour of the sky, or the colour of the surrounding objects which is so changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my eyes? ”

“ To add to the misery, with each step upward the air grew rarer and my breath shorter, making me feel a scorching sensation in the brain, while burning thirst was fast overcoming me—a morsel of snow, now and then taken, being utterly insufficient to quench it. ”

“ I knew that if once I let my breath go I would be drowned, merely by the spasmodic action of my lungs trying to recover air. I felt as if I should burst. It was a match against time, with life or death as the stake. ”

“ I know the cold sweat that breaks over the whole body and the sickly clutching about the heart that attend such an awakening, but doubt if any emerging from sleep can be really worse than many I have experienced. ”

“ Even now it happens to me: the hands and feet become so cold, the body becomes stiff, the heartbeat slows down, the breathing slows down, and then there is a gasping for breath. Up to a point you are there, you breathe your last breath, as it were, and then you are finished. ”

“ And spurns the balm which constitutes her sleep;
Her plaintive murmurs float upon the gale,
And almost make the stubborn rocks bewail.
O what is like the awful breach of death,
Whose fatal stroke invades the creature's breath!
It bids the voice of desolation roll,
And strikes the deepest awe within the bravest soul. ”

“ He takes the burning of his destroying fever for a healthful symptom, he forms his plans, and smiles calmly and cheerfully on his friends, and suddenly, some morrow of a quiet night, he falls into the sleep that never wakes. ”

“ You see, then, how death is caused in drowning; the air is shut out by the water, and the blood is not changed in the lungs; so the blood goes back to the heart dark instead of red, and is sent all over the body. ”

“ Even the debilitating passions of grief and fear produce an indirect operation upon the system that is favourable to life in sleep, for they excite that distressing disease called the night mare, which prompts us to speak, or halloo, and by thus invigorating respiration, overcomes the languid circulation of the blood in the heart and brain. ”

“ The cause of much waking in a dry brain, continual meditation, discontent, fears and cares, that suffer not the mind to be at rest, incontinency is from wind, and a hot liver, Montanus, cons. 26. Rumbling in the guts is caused from wind, and wind from ill concoction, weakness of natural heat, or a distempered heat and cold; [2679] Palpitation of the heart from vapours, heaviness and aching from the same cause. That the belly is hard, wind is a cause, and of that leaping in many parts. ”

“ To be thrown into a mass or bed of perfect dust, where the eyes are blinded by it, the ears stopped, and the mouth and lungs filled at the very first attempt to respire after having been thrown into it - what a horrible idea of suffocation and drowning! ”

“ INTOXICANTS AND SUN STROKES ALCOHOLISM. Acute Symptoms.—The face is flushed, the breath has the odor of liquor, the pulse is full and bounding with deep respiration. Reason, memory, judgment and will are first stimulated and then blunted. The drinker's peculiarities are exaggerated, the person becoming affectionate or quarrelsome. There is a loss of coordination as shown by the staggering, swinging, the relaxation of the muscles, and finally deep sleep, with snoring breathing. The person is unconscious, but can be partly aroused and will mutter when questioned or disturbed. ”

“ The first night that the fever took a favourable turn, and my burning eyelids at last closed to sleep, I had an awful dream, or inspiration, I will call it, to rouse me from a state of careless indifference to the future, and set before me the urgent necessity of self-examination and repentance. ”

“ It is said that drowning is the easiest of deaths, but those who have recovered from a state nearly approaching actual death by submersion in the water, describe the sensations of recovery to consciousness to be beyond description, painful and terrible. ”

“ Despite the hoarse roaring of the breakers, despite the shrieking and whistling of the wind, despite the dust constantly being deposited on their bodies, and entering ears, mouth, and nostrils,—despite the stifling sensation one would suppose they must have felt, and which should have awakened them,—despite all, they continued to sleep. ”

“ In such extreme cases of excite- ment, we seem to live hours in a minute, and a volume of thoughts crowd themselves into one single moment. It was so with me in that perilous scene.
Having been somewhat subject to faint, I think that after a few moments in the water I must have fainted, as, I did not suffer the pain common in the experience of drowning persons. I had been in the water .only a few moments, until I lost consciousness. The first I knew afterwards, I was on shore, receiving the kind and tender attentions of my brethren. ”

“ How long this slumber lasted, or whether it came at all, I never knew. It is a loving and tender thing in our Creator to decree to us this curtain of unconsciousness when nerve and strength would otherwise give way beneath the intensity of suffering—a holy and gentle thing for which we are not half thankful enough in oar estimate of blessings.
My sleep, or swoon, shielded me from long hours of agony, mental and physical, that must have become unendurable ere the close. ”

“ We were in dread. Our horror was at its height, circulation had stopped, all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered with cold sweat, like a sweat of agony! And what noise around our frail bark! ”

“ But throughout a long life I have been a close observer and have come to the conclusion that indigestion and improper circulation are no more the cause of this nightly terror than of rain and wind, though a frail condition will make the one as well as the other harder to endure. ”

“ Gently, hardly perceptibly the air at length begins to move. It is not a breeze, but the merest breath. But this breath scorches, pierces like an icy wind into bone and marrow, producing dull headache, enervation, and uneasiness. ”

“ Ah, the dreams that come to me! I feel that my health is breaking, so weak am I. When this morning I arose, sickness took me until I vomited and vomited. Yes, I feel, I know, that death is approaching. ”

“ These night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust your strength. ”

“ On falling asleep at first, he looks, perhaps, drowsy and heavy, like a person dozing in church, or at table when overcome by fatigue, or stupefied by excess in wine, or by the foul air of a crowded apartment ”

“ By CLEMENT SCOTT. I HAVE often heard it said, that a drowning man, before he sinks, never to rise again in this world, sees mirrored instantly in the dreamy mist, the dramatic moments and episodes of his life. ”

“ And surely there was a great slowness and wetness of the air, and dismal drippings that made desolation in the silence; and the feel of strange growths upon the boulders, as you do know, and oft an horrid slime and dankness; and the stink to be everywhere, so that we knew a constant disgust and fear. And alway the fumings of sulphur, that did seem, in verity, to beat down upon us, utter heavy and sore upon our lungs. ”

“ Such is all that my memory has preserved of the sensations I experienced in drowning--a death generally considered a very dreadful one, but which is, in reality, anything but painful. We have no means of judging what is suffered in almost any other manner of passing from the world ”

“ Dreads Connected with Water.—Strange as it may seem, water constitutes a source of dread for some people. We have the records of it in the peculiarities of great men and it is not unusual to meet it in common life. Dropping water is a source of disturbance for most people. It is quite impossible for the majority of men and women to go on writing or reading with any comfort if water is dropping near them. Dropping water, when one is trying to go to sleep, is one of the worst of awakeners. ”