Twilight sleep (English translation of the German word Dämmerschlaf) is an amnesic condition characterized by insensibility to pain without loss of consciousness, induced by an injection of morphine and scopolamine, especially to relieve the pain of childbirth. This combination induces a semi-narcotic state which produces the experience of childbirth without pain, or without the memory of pain. The term 'Twilight Sleep' is also sometimes used to refer to modern intravenous sedation.
Famous quotes containing the words twilight and/or sleep:
“Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“My one and noble heart has witnesses
In all love’s countries, that will watch awake;
And when blind sleep falls on the spying senses,
The heart is sensual, though five eyes break.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)