In 1886, the magazine "Russkaya Starina" told readers about one of the servants of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, who was forced to stay awake around her chambers all day long. He slept only 15 minutes, and then during the day - after dinner. This "slumber" was enough for him to restore the lost strength.
And here is a message from the Indiana state newspaper (USA) dated December 11, 1895: “David Jones from Anderson attracted the attention of doctors by the fact that two years ago he did not sleep for about 93 days, and last year - 131 days. Now he has a new episode of insomnia, which promises to be longer."
Let's get acquainted with the history of Rachel Sagi from the Hungarian city of Cegled. One morning, far from perfect for her, the housewife Rachel went to see the doctor about a persistent wild headache. The doctor found the cause of her illness in the fact that she "sleeps a lot" and advised her to sleep as little as possible.
And what? It remains a mystery how Rachel took this advice, but when she came home, she never fell asleep for… 25 years, 2 months and 11 days. Probably, she would not have slept much more, but after that period, Rachel died. Over the years, the housewife has never complained to anyone about the discomfort from the night vigil, and her headaches, as the doctor foresaw, really disappeared …
There are a lot of similar stories. In the 40s of the last century in the city of Trenton (New Jersey) lived a deep elder Alan Herpin, who for his 90 years did not know what a dream is. Several generations of doctors watched his sleepless life, and, dying, passed on to each other as a relic.
In all other respects, Herpin was the most ordinary person: he did any physical work, he had average mental abilities, good health, excellent appetite. After physical exertion, of course, he was tired, but since he could not sleep, he found rest in reading. This is how many books you can reread in a sleepless life! What is the reason for Alan's night vigils? He himself sees the reason in the following: in the last days of pregnancy, the mother fell and hit hard. Only this could somehow affect his health …
And the last story. The morning of November 29, 1960 turned out to be sensational for the Madrid newspapermen. With the first rays of the sun, the capital was visited on foot by the 61-year-old Spaniard Valentin Medina, who traveled 140 miles from South Castilla to Madrid in 4 days and 4 nights, that is, in 96 hours. Note sleepless hours!
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During the entire journey, he never closed his eyes, and from fatigue he occasionally stopped to rest. The march to Madrid Medina undertook one purpose: to draw the attention of the capital's luminaries of medicine to their bitter fate. Since childhood, he has lost sleep and does not know what to do with it. A curious circumstance emerged. Medina is completely illiterate, she cannot read and is idle all night long, experiencing "boredom and torment." As he himself put it: "I sit in the kitchen and wait for the roosters to crow at last."
Let's say right away that medicine was powerless to help Medina, who was not dreaming, and his trip to Madrid remained without consequences. None of sedatives, sleeping pills, and other means, including omnipotent hypnosis, helped.
It is known that muscle fatigue is eliminated without too many problems. It is enough to leave the strained muscles alone for 2-3 hours, as the lactic acid accumulated in them, which creates the impression of fatigue, will disintegrate by itself. Mental fatigue is a different matter. Creative people know that after 2-3 hours of intense mental work, they really want to sleep.
Here, rest is required not for the muscles, but for the nerve cells, and the cells can rest only when the work of the cerebral cortex is inhibited, and this can only happen in sleep. So sleep is really necessary. No wonder they once practiced "torture with sleep," or rather insomnia, and this was one of the most terrible tortures. A person was simply not allowed to sleep for a long time.
It is logical to assume that some people may not feel the need for sleep, since their nerve cells practically do not get tired, that is, they work in a special mode unknown to science, very economical in terms of energy consumption, with an efficiency close to 100%. At night, such abnormal ones are even able to give the brain an additional load in the form of reading books. How some people's brains can jump to a super-economical, fatigue-free mode of operation remains a mystery.
By getting rid of most of its sleep, humanity would have a "second life" at its disposal. The time difference (time zones) would stop “terrorizing” human organisms. All over the world, at any hour, people would work and live equally productively.
So, suppose scientists find ways to turn night into day. But will it always be good? And will it be a blessing at all? After all, the human body is evolutionarily tuned to normal day and night work cycles. Is it worth it to invade the protected area, experiment with it?
Alexander KHERSONOV