37 No Chance to Dream

The thought of not sleeping for twenty-four hours or more is not a pleasant one for most people. The amount of sleep that each person needs varies. In general, each of us needs about eight hours of sleep each day to keep our bodies healthy and happy. Some people, however, can get by with just a few hours of sleep at night.

It doesn’t matter when or how much a person sleeps. But everyone needs some rest to stay alive. Few would have thought that there might be an exception to this. Sleep, after all, is very basic. But a man named Al Herpin turned out to be a real exception, for supposedly he never slept!

Al Herpin was ninety years old when doctors came to his home in New Jersey. They hoped to negate the claims that he never slept. But they were surprised. Though they watched him every hour of the day, they never saw Herpin sleeping. He did not even own a bed. He never needed one.

The closest that Herpin came to resting was to sit in a rocking chair and read a half dozen newspapers. His doctors were baffled by this strange case of permanent insomnia. Herpin offered the only clue to his condition. He remembered some talk about his mother having been injured several days before he had been born.

Herpin never slept again until the day before he died at the age of ninety-four, never—it seems—having slept a wink.

对于大多数人来说，连续二十四小时或更长时间不睡觉的想法并不愉快。每个人需要的睡眠时间各不相同。一般来说，我们每个人每天大约需要八小时的睡眠来保持身体的健康和愉悦。不过，有些人晚上只需要几个小时的睡眠就能应付。

一个人什么时候睡、睡多久并不重要，但每个人都需要一些休息来维持生命。很少有人会想到可能有例外。毕竟，睡眠是非常基本的需求。但有一个叫阿尔·赫平的人被证明是一个真正的例外，因为据说他从不睡觉！

当医生们来到新泽西州阿尔·赫平的家中时，他已经九十岁了。他们希望否定他从不睡觉的说法，但结果很惊讶。尽管他们一整天每小时都观察他，却从未看到赫平睡觉。他甚至没有床，他从来不需要床。

赫平最接近休息的状态就是坐在摇椅上看半打报纸。他的医生们对这起奇怪的永久性失眠案例感到困惑。赫平提供了关于他病情的唯一线索，他记得有人说过，他的母亲在他出生前几天受过伤。

赫平直到九十四岁去世的前一天都没有再睡过觉，似乎他一辈子都没合过眼。