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In order that the reader may form at least some idea of von Haller’s manner of treating physiological topics I give below a rough translation^[6] of the first three paragraphs which occur in Chapter XX of his Primae Lineae Physiologiae (edition of 1751):—

Sleep

564.—The power which a person in perfect health possesses freely to exercise the different senses and to perform voluntary movements is called wakefulness or the state of being awake; the absence of the power to make voluntary movements and to utilize the different senses, combined with the quietude of all of them, bears the name of sleep.

565.—In sleep the mind either stops thinking entirely of the things which have been stored up by the individual in his memory or which are well-known facts, or else it busies itself exclusively with certain ideas or with impressions that produce upon the mind, at the time, pictures almost as vivid as the actual things or occurrences which they represent would produce. The term “insomnia” is employed when it is desired to designate the latter condition of the mind, and the mental pictures thus presented produce the effect that—although voluntary motions are at the time all in abeyance, and although the mind is absolutely quiet in all other respects—there remain certain directions in which it continues to operate actively, thus producing an elevation of the spirits (i.e., a certain degree of excitement) and more or less wakefulness. Sometimes a certain number of voluntary movements are associated with these mental impressions, and this may occur in such a degree that the organs of speech and many of the joints—indeed at times all of them—are compelled to act in harmony with the mental impressions. When this degree of insomnia is reached the person so affected is called a “somnambulist.”