阅读理解
What happens when human beings are not allowed to sleep for long periods of time?To answer this question, a New Yorker, Peter Tripp, offered to stay awake 200 hours.During that time Tripp was observed by a group of doctors, who reported on his progress.
After three days of staying awake, he began to show signs of his mental breakdown.He laughed at things that were not funny, and wept(哭泣)at things that were not sad.Complaining of pressure caused by a hat on his head, he tried repeatedly to take it off.Tripp, of course, was not wearing a hat.
On the fifth day he cried out that a doctor's jacket looked like crawling worms.Then he imagined he was in another city; he tried to run away from the building, insisting it was on fire; and he thought the 200-hour mark had been passed but that the doctors were still trying to keep the experiment going.After 200 hours without sleep, Tripp, said the doctors, was“suffering from mental illness.”He was nearly mad.
Hardly able to stand, Tripp was helped across the street to a room in a hotel.There, after being awake for 201 hours and thirteen minutes, he fell asleep.The doctors predicted(预言)he would sleep for twenty or thirty hours.“Peter Tripp will sleep the deepest sleep in history”, said the doctors.Tripp slept all right-for nine hours and eleven minutes.When he awoke, his first words were:“I feel fine.”After a medical check, his greatly surprised watchers said that he was sound and well.
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