Many people experience some form of temporary depersonalisation in their lives, typically at moments of extreme fatigue or high stress, such as during a car crash, where both the established defence options of fight or flight are removed. A number of recreational drugs also precipitate similar episodes.

This was revealed only in the experiments of ion bombardment of single crystals, because a polycrystalline material, even though its microcrystallites have a regular structure, in fact behaves like a nonarranged, random system.

customes and conceipts differing from mine, doe not so much dislike [translating desplaisent] me, as instruct me[…].

From the most ancient times to the present, in the crudest primitive tribe or the most magnificently ornamented civilization, man has found himself in a state of awed helplessness when confronted by the phenomena of strange illnesses or aberrations.