ch is filled with
other less intoxicating food.

This inattention to the irritative motions occasioned by external stimuli
is a very important circumstance in the approach of sleep, and is produced
in young children by rocking their cradles: during which all visible
objects become indistinct to them. An uniform soft repeated sound, as the
murmurs of a gentle current, or of bees, are said to produce the same
effect, by presenting indistinct ideas of inconsequential sounds, and by
thus stealing our attention from other objects, whilst by their continued
reiterations they become familiar themselves, and we cease gradually to
attend to any thing, and sleep ensues.

2. After great fatigue or inanition, when the stomach is suddenly filled
with flesh and vegetable food, the inattention to external stimuli, and the
reveries of imagination, become so conspicuous as to amount to a degree of
intoxication. The same is at any time produced by superadding a little wine
or opium to our common meals; or by taking these separately in considerable
quantity; and this more efficaciously after fatigue or inanition; because a
less quantity of any stimulating material will excite an organ into
energetic action, after it has lately been torpid from defect of stimulus;
as objects appear more luminous, after we have been in the dark; and
because the suspension of volition, which is the immediate cause of sleep,
is sooner induced, after a continued voluntary exertion has in part
exhausted the sensorial power of volition; in the same manner as we cannot
contract a single muscle long together without intervals of inaction.

3. In the beginning of intoxication we are inclined to sleep, as mentioned
above, but by the excitement of external circumstances, as of noise, light,
business, or by the exertion of volition, we prevent the approaches of it,
and continue to take into our stomach greater quantities of the inebriating
materials. By these means the irritative movements of the stomach are
excited into greater action than is natural; and in consequence all the
irritative tribes and trains of motion, which are catenated with them,
become susceptible of stronger action from their accustomed stimuli;
because these motions are excited both by their usual irritation, and by
their association with the increased actions of the stomach and lacteals.
Hence the skin glows, and the heat of the body is increased, by the more
energetic action of the whole gland