Tesla on Long Life and Sleep

Being asked for his views on reasons and signs of longevity, Mr. Tesla said: "A man receives a certain term of life; so many hours to pass on this earth — I mean hours when he is alive, awake; I do not count the hours when he is sleeping; I do not believe they are, strictly speaking, included in his term of life. When a man really lives he is dying hour by hour, but when he sleeps he is accumulating vital forces which will make him go on living. In other words, in measuring out our dole of hours to each one of us, the great timekeeper stops his count while we are sleeping. Therefore, the longer a man sleeps the longer he will remain on earth. Nearly all long-lived people have been great sleepers. When De Lesseps was on the ocean he would sleep twenty hours on a stretch. Gladstone is a great sleeper, and averages twelve hours a day. I can believe that a man who would learn to sleep eighteen hours a day might live 200 years." Mr. Tesla is himself a very poor sleeper.