Department of History, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN.
Chest. 2023 Mar;163(3):662-666. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2022.11.007.
Modern sleep specialists are taught that, before the twentieth century, sleep was universally classified as a passive phenomenon with minimal to no brain activity. However, these assertions are made on the basis of particular readings and reconstructions of the history of sleep, using Western European medical works and ignoring works composed in other parts of the world. In this first of two articles on Arabic medical discussions on sleep, I shall show that sleep was not understood to be a purely passive phenomenon, at least from the time of Ibn Sīnā (lat. Avicenna, d. 1037) onward. Building on the earlier Greek medical tradition, Ibn Sīnā provided a new pneumatic understanding of sleep that allowed him to explain previously recorded phenomena associated with sleep, while providing a way to capture how certain parts of the brain (and body) can even increase their activities during sleep.
现代睡眠专家们被教导说，在 20 世纪之前，睡眠被普遍归类为一种被动现象，大脑活动极少或没有。然而，这些断言是基于对睡眠史的特定解读和重构得出的，使用的是西欧的医学著作，而忽略了世界其他地区创作的作品。在关于阿拉伯医学对睡眠讨论的这两篇文章中的第一篇中，我将表明，至少从伊本·西那（拉丁名为阿维森纳，卒于 1037 年）的时代起，睡眠就不是被理解为一种纯粹的被动现象。伊本·西那在前希腊医学传统的基础上，对睡眠提出了一种新的气动理解，使他能够解释与睡眠相关的先前记录的现象，同时提供了一种方法来捕捉大脑（和身体）的某些部分如何在睡眠中甚至增加它们的活动。
