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“This phenomenon has been called by different names in different places: first and second sleep, first nap and dead sleep, evening sleep and morning sleep,” said Benjamin Reiss, professor of English at Emory University and author of “Wild Nights: How Taming.” Sleep Created Our Restless World.” He added that at the time it was not a choice, but rather something people made because it fit the patterns of agriculture and craftsmanship.
At the time, besides being a helpful time to conceive, the wakefulness period was believed to be the most important time to take potions and pills and aid digestion (he sleeps on one side of the body during the first sleep, then on the other side during the second sleep, Professor Ekirch said. .
Professor Reiss said that since most work is done in or near the home, there is no pressure to get to the factory floor on time, get on the train or send the kids to school. Sleep was governed not by the clock, but by the rhythm of day and night and the changes in season.
There were also negative causes of interrupted sleep.
“Sleeping surfaces—usually a grass-filled sack, or wool or horsehair if you’re lucky—made it more difficult to sleep for extended periods of time without interruption than it is today,” Professor Reiss said. There were also health problems, of course. For example, “without modern dentistry, toothache can start throbbing in the middle of the night.”
Everything changed with the Industrial Revolution, profit and productivity came to the fore; The belief was that people who limited their sleep to a single interval gained an advantage. The increasing prevalence of artificial lights has allowed for later bedtimes, leading to sleep compression.
Fast forward a few hundred years, and we’ll get used to compressed sleep. Well, we have some.
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