HEALTH HINTS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 16, 18 January 1913, Page 15

HEALTH HINTS.

COMFORTABLE FEET: HOW TO GET THEM. It is utterly inrpossible to keep well unless the feet are kept dry* and warm all the time. Dr. George Butler recommerode in a recent paper that if cold and dry, the feet should be soaked in hot water for ten minutee every night: and, when wiped and dried, they should be .rubbed well with ten or fifteen drops of sweet oil, .whioh should be done patiently with the .hands, rubbing the oil into the soles of the feet -particularly. On getting up in the morning dip both feet at once into water, as cold as the air of the room, half-ankle deep, for a minute in c—rimer, half a minute or less in wirj#-T, rubbing one foot with the other; then •wipe dry, and, if conveiriend, hold them to the fire, rubbing them until perfectly 'dry and warm in every part. If the feet are damp and cold, attend only to the morning washings, but ai ways at night remove the stockings, and hold the feet to the fire, rubbing them with the hands for fifteen minutes, and get immediately into bed. Persons who walk a great deal during the day should on coming home for the night remove their shoes and stockings, and hold the feet to the fire until perfectly dry, then put on a dry pair of hose, and wea<r slippers for the remainder of the evening.—''Science Sittings." THE SLEEP OF THE YOUNG. Sir James Crichton Browne read a paper on ''Brain Rest" at an educational ' conference at Tunbridge Wells. England, recently. -He said that the belief was current .—at a boy wearied with mental work "would find recuperation in cricket or a cycle run. but that *was bad physiology. Gymnastics were not restorative where there was mental fatigue. Some thirty years ago he publish ed a table showing the average amo—it of sleep required by children at different ages, and, looking over that table in the light of further experience, he would amend it in only one particular. Instead of allowing twelve hours' sleep to children of from four to six years of age, he conceded -thirteen. To his other estimates be would adhere, giving as a minimum eleven hours' sleep to children from seven to nine, ten and a-half Trours to children from nine to fourteen, ten

hours to children from fourteen to seventeen, nine and a-half ho_B to youths or maidens from seventeen to twenty-one, nine hours to young men and women from twenty-one to twenty-seven, and , eight hours to ail at later stages. He had seen paircful instances of the immediate effects of ir-sufficiency of 6leep in highly-strung, sensitive boys at public schools, and it was not only at public schools that the evils of deficient brain rest .were encountered. The rest cures of which they now heard so often had, he fancied, in many cases to be .undertaken merely to make up the arrears of 6lecp in early years. The sleep of the rising generation was being detrimentally interfered -with, and the consequences must be a rich crop of neurasthenia and mental enfeebleinent in the future. Enormous numbers of young children lived under conditions •which made a sufficiency of brain rest of the right sort impossible.. They o- 0 t bnt enatehee of adulterated sleep -with no brain rrourisl—lent in it. and went to school in the morning imrested, the despair of the teacher and a reproach to our civilisation.