De somno et vigilia theses ad disputandum propositae

the spirits, and compel them to wake, such as pains, acrid humors and vapors (of which there is great power in fevers, especially burning and bilious ones), attentive reading and thinking, heavy cares, shouting, excessive noise, pinching, pricking, and any harsher handling, etc.

XXXIV.

The paths through which the spirits are accustomed to be carried possess the power to induce sleep whenever they are occluded, whether by compressing agents, such as wounds, contusions of the head, or inflammations occupying a portion of the brain; or by obstructing agents, such as many thick, viscous humors (which heat alone or generous consumption of wine sometimes melts, thereby creating sleep); or likewise vapors of a similar nature raised up from food, drink, or humors contained within.

XXXV.

Those things, however, that clear these same paths, having overcome the causes of obstruction and compression that we have mentioned, rouse the sleeping.

XXXVI.

Thus far regarding the efficient cause and the form of sleep and waking. The end of both, however, is the integrity of actions and the preservation of the animal that is, the living body.

XXXVII.

Furthermore, just as the proximate cause of sleep, the immobility of the spirits, assumes its own differences and varies as its producing causes are changed—the variety of which can be observed primarily in the duration and vehemence of the action, as well as in the multifarious state of the subject body in which this action is produced—it is no wonder if many differences of sleep are found.

XXXVIII.

By a common consideration of all these, sleep