Snoring

“ Finally,—not to multiply, as one might do indefinitely, such illustrations of our writer’s singular simplicity and artlessness,—he even notes being “mightily troubled” with snoring in his sleep, a statement which I have reserved as a kind of climax, since I find the allegation of snoring to be about the last that sensitive humanity is willing to bear. Charge a man with theft, if you will; but, as you value your life, do not suggest that he snores. ”

“ You'll get used to the way we snore before long, and you'll kind of enjoy it. I'd be scared to death if I got awake in the night and didn't hear everybody in the house snoring. It's kind of restful to know that everybody's asleep,—and not dead. ”

“ You'll now point out the man you charge with snoring, and I'll tell you right here, that unless you prove your accusation that there man will take you out on the platform and hang you without any further nonsense.' 'I can't tell you the precise man who was snoring,' said the Jew, 'but I can show you the berth where the snoring came from. ”

“ The question follows: "Can snoring be prevented?" It is plainly a nuisance, and ought to be indictable. I have heard of the use of local stimulants, such as camphire and ammonia—how I longed for the sweet revenge of holding a bottle of aqua ammonia under that Roman nose!—and also of clipping the uvula, which may cause snoring by resting on the base of the tongue. ”

“ It is only with the mouth open that snoring can be accomplished during sleep. Awake, if the nose is closed by the thumb and finger, by taking a forcible breath, it is possible to snore, and the same result may be accomplished with the mouth shut and the nose open; but the muscular effort necessary to its accomplishment is more than we can command during sleep, and would wake up the individual who might unconsciously make the effort.
If the mouth be closed (the natural condition during slumber) , but one current of air will pass to and from the lungs. ”

“ Smile if you like, but I feel my faith in the human soul weaken when I contemplate a sleeping man whose mouth gapes and who snores like a great hog. The horrible stench which tainted the damp breeze at Moncourt, Lagarde, and Kerprich, rising from [84] the putrefying corpses of men and beasts, was to my mind less strongly insistent of the animal relationships of man than is the slow, irregular rhythm, the dull and undignified noise, of snoring. But one gets used to everything. ”

“ Well, in the first place it's always a big man, put together kind of loose and careless, that snores. Your small, tight-built nervous chap never snores. Now I'm a snorer myself, and I don't deny it. That's one of the reasons that I don't travel on a sleeping-car; but if I could reduce my weight by, say, eighty pounds, there wouldn't be any more snoring about me. ”

“ Then the boy told him again the same thing about his snoring, and the man bade him go to sleep, and he began to snore, and the man to blow his bellows until the snoring stopped. Then the man took out his irons again, and the boy jumped up, and the man dropped the irons, saying, "Why, what's the matter now that you can't sleep?" ”

“ She sat crouched down in his great elbow-chair, fast asleep. And she was really asleep, there was no coquettish shamming about it since coquetry does not admit of snoring and my lady snored distinctly; true, it was a very small and quite inoffensive snore, induced by her somewhat unwonted posture, but a snore it was beyond all doubt. ”

“ Not seldom the enlargement has become considerable before it attracts attention; one of the first symptoms that indicate it being the loud snoring of the child during sleep, who is compelled by the obstruction at the back of the nostrils to breathe with its mouth open. ”

“ It is a strange thing how many otherwise nice people snore. Travelling in America has for me one disadvantage—the fact that one has to sleep, like a dish on a Welsh dresser, in the same compartment with about forty people, six of whom surely snore. There is the loud sonorous snore of the merchant prince, the angry, pugnacious bark of the "drummer," the mature grunt of the stout lady, and the gentle lisp-like snore of the débutante. You can't stop them. One would expect "Yankee ingenuity" to find a way out.
I think that there ought to be a special padded Pullman for the snoring persons. ”

“ Kant, the philosopher, claims to have cured himself of consumption by this discovery. Persons never snore except by breathing through the open mouth. O, give us quiet, you snorers, by keeping your mouths shut, even at the expense of “keeping your eyes open” to watch yourself, and thus deliver the world from the disturbance of snoring.
The Lungs.—Breathing.
All that live, down even to vegetables and trees, breathe, must breathe, in order to live; live in proportion as they breathe; begin life’s first function with breathing, and end its last in their last breath. ”

“ With deep breathing, perhaps accompanied by a variation in the position of the soft palate, a rattling noise may be heard in addition to the snoring, which is due to a vibration of the soft palate. Hence it is evident how flinging a pillow at a snorer, or poking him in the ribs, will often cause him to be silent even when the disciplinary measure does not awaken him, for a change of position that lets the tongue and soft palate fall a little forward secures a free passage for the air. ”

“ The average number of inspirations in a minute is fifteen—remember, snoring is an act of the inspiration—the number of hours I lay awake was six. Fifteen snores a minute make nine hundred an hour. Multiply 900 by 6—the number of hours I lay awake—and you have 5400, the number of notes struck by each snorer. There were at least twelve distinct and regular snorers in the car. Multiply 5400 by 12, and you have 64,800 snores, not including the snuffling neighs, perpetrated in that car from about eleven P. M. until five the next morning! ”

“ Why, speaking of snoring, I've known lots of what you would call tragedies to happen in sleeping-cars on account of snoring. You don't hear of 'em in the papers, for the men that do these tragedies don't care to talk about 'em, and the company naturally wants the thing kept quiet. ”

“ A lady of my acquaintance was once awakened out of a sound sleep by the smell of tobacco smoke from the pipe of a thoughtless burglar who had quietly entered a distant apartment of the house. A sudden change of wind, deluging a city with the vapors of a glue-factory or rendering establishment, may in like manner disturb the slumbers of thousands of people.
The sense of hearing seems to be the most persistent of all the special senses. It is not a very uncommon thing for persons to be awakened by the sound of their own snoring ”

“ How often do we hear people complain that they suffer from insomnia, when in fact they get a reasonable amount of sleep, and indeed often keep others awake by their snoring.
When you wake, get up, for a second sleep does no good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hiccough is caused by a spasmodic twitching of the diaphragm, a thin muscular membrane which divides the chest from the abdomen. It generally arises from sympathy with the stomach; and it is highly probable that the muscular twitches and jerks are so many efforts on the part of the diaphragm to assist the stomach to get rid of some undigested matter.
1028. Why do we snore?
Snoring is caused by air sweeping through the passages that lead from the mouth through the nostrils, and which, in our waking moments, are capable of certain muscular modifications to adapt them to our breathing. ”

“ The rough stones under their sleeping-bag seem to have been the only thing they could not turn into a jest. When one snored too loudly to allow the other to sleep, it was only necessary for the victim to move; they lay so close together for warmth that a movement was equal to a dig in the back, and that meant waking the snorer by changing his position on the knobbly boulders from ease to discomfort. ”

“ She goes to bed, but, for the first few hours, she is too much excited to sleep; toward morning, when the air is pure and invigorating, and, when to breathe it, would be to inhale health and life, she falls into a feverish slumber, and wakes not until noonday. ”

“ We hear when the air between the sonant body and the organ of hearing suffers concussion, a vibration which spreads spherically and then forms waves and strikes upon the ears, just as the water in a reservoir forms wavy circles when a stone is thrown into it. Sleep is caused, they say, by the slackening of the tension in our senses, which affects the ruling part of the soul. ”

“ You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover ”

“ If it be so in one waking time, when the mind is busy with a multitude of impressions flowing in upon it from every sense—much more is it likely so to be when the impressions made by the senses are few, as is proved by the experience of every reader. In sleep, a slight sound falling upon the ear will suggest a dream of roaring cannon or rattling thunder. ”

“ But if you are within sight of your sleeping comrades, and within hearing of their snores, it becomes doubly exasperating, and might really sour the temper if it were not for the consolatory reflection that another time you will be the happy sleeper, and one of the present performers on the nose will be listening to your efforts to play upon that organ. ”

“ The affectation that the young person carries into pretended sleep, the marked exaggeration with which she pretends to sleep, may often serve to betray her. Often, when suddenly approached, she may be seen to blush, and to be covered with perspiration unaccounted for by the temperature of the room, the warmth of the covering, or any other observable cause. The breathing is at the same time more precipitate, the pulse more developed, harder, and quicker, the blood-vessels fuller, and the heat greater than in the natural condition. ”

“ Go into a room where a sensitive or “high-strung” person is taking a nap—not sleeping [51] heavily, as most men sleep, but lightly, naturally, as all wild animals take their rest. Make no noise, but stand or sit quietly where you can look intently into the sleeper’s face; and commonly, by a change of position or a turning away of the head or a startled opening of the eyes, the sleeper will show that he feels your look and is trying subconsciously to avoid it. ”

“ Continuance in the same posture and with the same pressure of blood within and of the pillow without upon the same part of the brain seems to preserve the action of the dream, which is disturbed at once by directing the flow of blood and the pressure to another part of the brain. If a sleeper is seen to be agitated in his sleep by painful dream, exhibited in moaning, restlessness and expression of distress upon the countenance, remedy may be found in gently moving the head into another position, if the body cannot be moved and it is not desired to waken. ”

“ And the nape of his neck bathing in cool blue watercress,
Sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under the skies,
Pale in his green bed where the light falls like rain.
Feet in the gladiolas, he is sleeping. Smiling like
A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
Nature, rock him warmly: he is cold. ”

“ Their supine posture assured me that they were asleep. Sleep usually comes at their bidding, and if, perchance, they should be wakeful at an unseasonable moment, they always sit upon their haunches, and, leaning their elbows on their knees, consume the tedious hours in smoking. ”

“ Certain elements wake while others are asleep; and these waking cells may be aroused to a degree far in excess of what is usual during the sleep of the brain without attaining to the level of their diurnal activity. The mind, undisturbed by external impressions, gives its attention to the operation of these waking organs, and a dream with all its consequences, somnambulic or otherwise, is the result. In other words, the plane of consciousness, so to speak, is lowered in sleep to the level of these molecular vibrations. ”

“ The illusion may persist for some moments after waking. A lady, after breathing rather loudly and convulsively for a few seconds, wakes up, saying 'There is a rat or a mouse on the bed, shaking it up and down.' 'You were asleep,' her husband replied, 'as I knew by your breathing.' 'Oh, I was breathing like that,' she said, 'to make it jump off.' Here we see that, somewhat as in the previous cases, the dreamer's own muscular activity is, during sleep, reconstructed into the image of an external force ”

“ Thus in normal sleep the conditions may be said to be always favorable for producing dreams of flying or of floating in the air, and any slight thoracic disturbance, even in healthy persons, arising from lungs, heart, or stomach, and serving to bring these conditions to sleeping consciousness, may determine such a dream. ”

“ By means of a spring these strips vibrate the eyelid gently and induce drowsiness. All the mechanical devices are constructed on the plan of inducing eye-weariness, whether by vibration or by fixity. Either effect is in accordance with the modern theories of sleep. Sleep may be induced by monotony also of sounds; by concentration either of the attention or the hearing on one point, or by more numerous impressions89 than the eye can comfortably receive; thus, when riding in a train, the succession of views will often induce sleepiness. ”