It doesn’t matter when or how much a person sleeps, but everyone needs some rest to stay alive. That’s what all doctors thought, until they heard about Al Herpin. Al Herpin, it was said, never slept. Could this be true? The doctors decided to see this strange man themselves.
Al Herpin was 90 years old when the doctors came to his home in New Jersey. They thought for sure that he got some sleep of some kind. So they stayed with him and watched every movement he made. But they were surprised. Though they watched him hour after hour and day after day, they never saw Herpin sleeping. In fact, he did not even own a bed. He never needed one.
The only rest that Herpin sometimes got was sitting in a comfortable chair and reading newspapers. The doctors were puzzled by his strange continuous sleeplessness. They asked him a lot of questions, hoping to find an answer. They found only one answer that might explain this question. Herpin remembered some talk about his mother having been injured several days before he was born. But that was all. Was this the real reason? No one could be sure.
Herpin died at the age of 94.
小题1:The doctors came to Herpin’s home in order to __________.
A．treat him for his illness
B．find the reason why some old people didn’t need any sleep.
C．get some proof to show his sleeplessness was not really true.
D．help him to have a rest in some day.小题2:After watching him closely, the doctors came to believe that Al Herpin ________.
A．needed some kind of sleep.
B．needed no sleep at all.
C．was too old to need any sleep.
D．often slept in a chair.小题3:Al Herpin’s condition could be regarded as ___________.
A．an unusual one
B．a common one
C．very healthy
D．very funny小题4: The main idea of this passage is that ____________.
A．large numbers of people do not need sleep
B．everyone needs some sleep to stay alive
C．people can live longer by trying not to sleep at all
D．a person was found who actually didn’t need any sleep
