As if we did not have enough to cause us sleepless nights, the Royal Society for Public Health has demanded a ‘national sleep strategy’, presumably overseen by some sort of Czzzzar, to lay down, and one very much hopes rigorously enforce, strict guidelines on how long each of us should sleep. The ancients knew all about it.
The Greek doctor Hippocrates commented that while it was natural to be awake during the day and asleep at night, pain, distress, psychological problems, symptoms of some physical ailment, especially indigestion, or simply old age were the likely cause of insomnia.
For Galen, sleep and insomnia originated in the brain. The more active the brain during the day, the better the chance of a good night’s rest: the brain needed sleep to recover. Ancient dream theory suggested that during the night the brain was trying to deal with the ‘residue’ of the day.
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