THE CHINA MAIL, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1957.
I abandon my Sleep Test
by CHAPMAN PINCHER
AFTER making do with five and a half hours sleep a night for nearly
a month in an effort to extend my living time I have to admit that it is NOT a good idea.
Though still convinced that eight or even seven hours' sleep a night are an unnecessary luxury, I have now decided to settle for six and a half hours.
For these reasons:
1 MY HEAD had begun to feel as though it was lined with lead. I was becoming subject to buzzing noisea
in my ears, persistent dryness of the mouth, and a weird feeling that my tongue had grown bigger till warning? symptoms of nervous distress.
2 BY MIDDAY I was finding it difficult to remember
names when speaking on the telephone and inade: cureless errors when totting up the sums I used to test my mental alertness.
3 IN SPITE of the extra hours of consciousness which cutting my sleep provided I found I was still rushed and the time seemed to fly as fast as ever.
irritable
I HAD become noticeably more
with my family, friends and the colleagues who have the un- enviable job of ringing me up late at night on behalf of the newspaper. i was also more critical of myself and was incensed by trivial incidents. (Thus when I missed an easy-running shot at a rabbit on Saturday-no un- common occurrence for me I was annoyed about it the i whole day.)
5 There was a distinct danger that I might increase my
drinking.
ASTONISHED!
THE effect of drink on the sleep-starved body was the
most revealing of my experiences. Normally I drink little and then only at meals. or parties. I like drink entirely for the pleasure of swallow ing it and never for its effect.
But one evening last week astonished myself by ordering a whisky in a pub, downing it quickly, and feel- ing so much better that I had another.
A
Now-a sleep machine
sleeping machine has beest invented by Russian scientists, wald Dr. Horsley Cant, of the Johns Hopkins flospital, Baltimore.
Dr. Cast, now on a visit to
Moscow, said he had seen this new cure for Insomnia,
It works by attaching two small electrodes to the patient's eye- lide. Mild electrical Impolien aru ananitted.
Arlle bas Kiso invented a sleeping machine, Hero in hla design :--
It is clear that with the abundance of energy I ner- mally enjoy, my physiology is never so strained that it needs the solace of alcohol.
THIS is the report on a failure. The "Average Man" (apart from an urge to shoot rabbits very early in the morning) submitted himself, in public, to an experiment to test this theory: Yuo can live longer by gaining hours "wasted" in sleep. Which in Pincher's case meant cutting down to 51% hours' sleep a night. Now, reporting. once more as the Average Man (and the Average Man loves sleep), he tells why he prefers less life; more slumber;
too if I continue to deprive awake when it wants to sleep when I slumped exhausted into wife, who was in the same room, myself of sleep.
has far more disturbing effects bed after 1230 cnd could then lying awake.because
of
To help me cut my sleep down with the iden squeezing on extra two and n half years of conscious ness out of the 30 years that statisticians say I can stili expect, I devised a new rule-Never wake
up and go to sleep on the same day.
I obeyed it punctiliously, I was rarely asleep before 12.30 a.m., and rarely in bed after 6.15 a.m.
bedy cannot get to sleep.
the get off again for hours.
BANG!
It has also confirmed that have widely different
sleep requirements. I am people
con-
adent that I will be able to
20,
►
not slept on.
The body's power of recupera- lion is so great that after" only one night of going to bed at 10,30 I feel infinitely better.
I had no difficulty in getting
DRINK "It was this that decided
me...
disappointing in some ways, will have been a triumph.
manage on six and a half hours I DID not realise how tired she of to sleep at this unusually without any ill effects but I am was until one morning tust early hour as I feared 1 mighi, sure that my wife could not do week when, on looking out but the habit of waking shortly of the bedroom window pt. 0 before six and having to get up o'clock, I spotted a rabbit nibbling seems to be already ingrained. She flung her apron in the a rose bush. air as if we had won the Pools
I thought I might treat myscit when I arrived home and told It was shootable only through by staying in bed until 7 o'clock I shall have conquered that her that the Pincher household the window so I got my shotgun on the first moming, but my irresistible temptation to linger Ared. The report legs began to feel so jittery that in bed "Just a few minutea was returning to a more normal and Urae-table.
verberated through the house I had to get up.
longer" which has bedevilled my She had been losing sleep and must have been heard in If this goes on, as I hope it plans for attacking the day for 1 never dared to cheat by because she invariably wake up the village a mile away, but my will, the experiment, though as long as I can remember. snoozing in a club or in train though often desperate for sleep, because having described my experiment in the Daily Express 1 feared I might be spotted.
Even at home I had to forgo my forty winks after lunch on Sundays because I should have never heard the last of it.
A FUSS?
PEOPLE who habitually
spend no more than five and a half hours in bed and several have written to - must me claiming this think I am making a fuss must Others ure made different- about nothing. So ly and really require an chronic insomniacs. occasional strong drink. I But this experiment has shown am satisfied that I should that forcing the body to keep
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'COR! I THOUGHT MY SLIPS WERE BLACK TILL I SAW YOURS!"
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Copyright in all countries.
The Woman First report on 56 cases
with four Children by
which will arouse fierce discussion in every home'
a man she has
never
seen
N Englishwoman has were so delighted
that they
cises,
Who is right? Dr Jackson or the leaders of legal mid religious thought?
Dr Jackson'a revelations do nothing to answer this question for the moral and legal Implica- tons cannot be brushed rside. But the fact that one woman ¿ector has 50 test-tube babies la her cose records shows that tho question of AID. has quietly become too big to be ignored.
There must be hundreds and probably thousands of children In Britain who were born in respectable, happy homes yet one day find themselves stigmatised an illegitimate.
may
In the past the results of arti- had four fine children went back to Dr Jackson in the ficial insemination have come
to light only during divorce In the light of such figures whose father she has never hope of having a further child.
It is surely time that the Church, met-and will never meet. The doctor persuaded the sanie
doctors, and lawyers got to- the status of man to serve as donor again so Such instances have high gether to settic This is disclosed by Dr that the children would be full lighted the unfortunate results of these children. Margaret Hadley Jackson, a blood-relations, gynaecologist, in the first way successful. detailed medical report
result of what is The couple repeated the ex- Adulterous union," "test-tube" babies.
periment twice more And now have four youngsters who to all were all con- the outside world are theirs.
on
The children ceived after "A.ID."-which is short for Artificial Insemination by Anonymous Donor.
The woman and her husband, who had been married for several years, approached Dr Jackson at the loyal, Devon and Excler Hospital after they had failed to have any children of their own.
AFTER
Listed
Again
55 others
A.I.D. the process the declaring of a
ned to do jingiliale and the Chapman Pincher
Realising the possibility et such complications, the Archi- bishop of Canterbury, the Pope, of religious ond ether lenders ..thought have condemned A.L.D. on principle as being manorat cs
THE children are well up to well as illicit.
the average, mentally and
The archbishop went so far us physically," Dr Jackson states to suggest that it should be made
to a report of a criminal offence. according medical meeting in London at which she revealed her results. • Yot here is highly intelligent woman doctor with long ex- This is only one of lã cases in
Dr Jackson's own practice in perience of human relations and which couples who desperately who has seen the results of A.I.D. claiming that it has careful medical wanted children have been able brought great happhacks to lonely examinations sho advised to have them following A.1.D.
couples who fell the need of AJD. The couple agreed, after weighing up the legal and possi- There were 17. coses in which children, ble emotional complications,
pleased with their first child that they come From a small list of carefully back for a second.
couples
were ga
"with
000
tho
selected donors—all known to be perfectly sound physically and
axception mentally Dr Jackson cho a marriages have been consolidated man to be the father of a child re
Improved," sho reports. ho would never 100,
“The results are extremely en couraging."...
His name was kept secret frain
the women and her husband and
will remain so for over.
Theme Sgures and opinions aro the first to be released by m
A plea
ER report to the doctors in Londoti was in part a plea for more of them to carry out what is in her optrilon 'din ݈ct of humanity.
Miny doctori refuse to be in Eventually a healthy baby, doctor on this delicate and con- volved in A.I.I), because of the
possible complications.
was born,
Husband and wits troversial subject,
|POCKET. CARTOON
by OSBERT LANCASTER
"One of these fine daya the Americans'll wake, up and find themselves faced by u heroine of the Soviet Union with a larger orbit, shan:
Jayne Mansfield's,”