On ``Snoring in the Ancient World''

Solomon's ``and there is no new thing under the sun'' (Ecclesiastes 1,9) crosses our minds after reading Esser's article on ``Snoring in the Ancient World,'' published in 1941 in Germany's leading journal for history of medicine and science, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und Naturwissenschaften.

Albert Esser, Dr. med. habil., Dr. phil., Professor of History of Medicine (1885-1972, Düsseldorf, Germany) was an outstanding scholar who devoted his attention to studying ancient medicine. He started as an ophthalmologist, studied philosophy, learned Sanskrit, and was especially interested in the mutual influence of ancient Indian and Greek medicine. Between 1946 and 1961 he taught History of medicine at the University of Düsseldorf. Most of his publications give fascinating insight into ancient ophthalmology, the more surprising to detect this precious pearl on snoring in his treasury of works. Esser cites statements, epigrams, and parts of poems on snoring from Greco-Roman literature in order to illustrate our forefathers' outstanding talent for observing causes and symptoms of snoring apart from some imaginative interpretations.

The ancient Greeks and Romans documented that snoring is not only a proof of sleep but also a noise which can be produced deliberately. Snoring was furthermore interpreted as an expression of amorality, indecency, and depravity. A typical example of this ethical aspect of snoring is set forth by Dion Chrysostomus when he reports about the inhabitants of Tarsus in Asia Minor, where children and adults alike were attacked by an epidemic disease of their noses and snored at day and during the night.

In that town not only snoring but in the same way sneezing revealed the morally depraved character of their inhabitants, states Dion. Another source, an unknown epigrammist, reports how alcohol and snoring may have changed the character of a person so that ``he has no longer loved the muses or his friends.''

Snoring may be caused by exogenous factors such as excessive drinking and eating, supine position, a dropping of the lower jaw, or an epidemic disease of the nose. Esser also cites endogenous or constitutional factors that induce snoring such as age or the pyknic or plethoric sleeper with a well-fed neck.

There are some nice observations about the characteristics of the snoring sounds, including the extremely loud and interrupted snoring and the apneic snoring combined with a stop of breath. The mainly inspiratory type of snoring was recognized, as were the respiratory effort and body movements connected with snoring.

Our ancient ancestors even reported seeing snoring instead of hearing it and it is left to our good nose to find out what they meant by this: perhaps snoring during REM sleep? In visual arts snoring has rarely been illustrated and then mostly with a speech balloon.

In 1842, the French caricaturist Honoré Daumier depicted the story of Selene and Endymion in a lithograph in ``Charivari'' (Fig. [1]). Selene was Helios's sister and illuminated the dark with her golden crown. Endymion was a young prince, who, after hunting on Mount Latmus one day, lay down in a grotto and fell asleep. Selene saw him and, attracted by his beauty, stole a kiss while he was sleeping. When Endymion asked Zeus to grant him immortality and eternal youth, the god agreed on the condition that Endymion remain eternally asleep. Thus, Selene came night after night to caress her sleeping lover with her amorous rays although he was obviously snoring, as he was lying there in his supine position and with a dropped lower jaw.

Dr. Esser's article, which follows, has been translated from German into English by Kerstin Jakob.27