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Writing an Imagined Immunity: Sleep, Sleeplessness, and the Fight Against Infection

Martin Willis, Keir Waddington

    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
    |August 10, 2026
    PubMed
    Summary

    Early awareness of sleep's impact on immunity existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, predating modern studies. Popular writing linked sleep to bodily defense and later shifted focus to social and environmental immunity.

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