Thanks to my son's determination to never sleep by himself, the last fortnight has been an endless heavy-limbed fever dream of faraway stares and spontaneous unconsciousness.
I reasoned with myself that, because I'd got home safely at the end of the night, the police had weren't likely to be interested I'd shown classic symptoms of having had my drink spiked – including amnesia, visual problems, nausea, unconsciousness and lowered inhibitions – but I didn't know what the guy looked like.
It is his reactions, not Mr Ejiofor's wielding of the lash, that create the slaughterhouse horror of the scene where a female slave is whipped to a riven unconsciousness.
The three-drug cocktail that is used by 37 American states is supposed first to induce unconsciousness, then to paralyse muscles and block breathing, and finally to stop the heart.
The second, smaller force, is tougher, because it pushes blood downwards and away from the head, sometimes leading to unconsciousness.
It is less clear how exactly that trauma contributes to unconsciousness.
Ever since then, doctors have been trying to fathom exactly what causes the curious state of unconsciousness, now known as anaesthesia, into which he lapsed.For a long time, researchers in the field believed that anaesthetics worked by dissolving in the fatty sheaths that insulate nerves.
Until 2010 most used three drugs: sodium thiopental to induce unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to stop breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
In the former the possessed gets into an intense mental state and shows superhuman strength and knowledge: he quivers, rages, struggles, and finally falls into a condition similar to unconsciousness.
Brief periods of unconsciousness, of which the patient may not be aware, occur in many forms of epilepsy, narcolepsy, repeated attacks of low blood sugar, and reduction in the blood supply to the brain particularly the brainstem.
The Brangwens begin as farmers so attached to the land and the seasons as to represent a premodern unconsciousness, and succeeding generations in the novel evolve toward modern consciousness, self-consciousness, and even alienation.
