HOME LESSONS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 85, 10 April 1926, Page 20

HOME LESSONS

NEED FOE BEST BEFORE SLEEP.

Sir James Crichton-Browne, in a recent lecture entered an emphatic protest against the iniquity of home lessons for boys, advocating in their place quiet recreation, and for adults during a period" of two hours before going to bed the, vacuous novel, the game of patience, or the soothing cigar.

The blood vessels, he insisted, did not dominate the brain, but were the servants of it. Unquestionably the brain could not.rest if arterial blood was coursing through it. • What sleep was was unknown, but it was known that important factors favouring ,it were tho absence of external stimuli and a diminution in the irritability of the brain itself. Renovation of tissue was always continuing in the brain even without sleep, and the action of the brain when working was explosive, giving rise to waste products that, as in the case of the body, were poison^ to it. In this connection a schoolboy, keen on excelling in a race, might fall dazed and dizzy, intoxicated by poisons of his own making. It was the duty of the school master to study the problem of fatigue even when the school doctor had certified the boy as having a heart capable "of standing the strain of athletics.

Sir James Crichton-Browne inclined to the view that sleep was related to the withdrawing by the nerve cells of the processes that kept them in touch with external stimuli, though he admitted that the theory could only be regarded as a useful hypothesis. The whole period of sleep was not spent in repair of brain tissue, and certain races like the negroes needed more sleep than the Anglo-Saxons, because the lower nerve centres also required repair. It was when a man was at the zenith of his career that he required the least amount of sleep.

Raising the question as to whether the children of the present day secured sufficient sleep, he was afraid that many of them were starved in this respect. There were enlightened homes and enlightened teachers, but there was a tendency under scholastic pressure to encroach on sleep. Eight hours were enough for the normal, adult, and it was remarkable that literary men interfered with their sleep apparently without ill-effectsj

Much of the best literary work, had been done during periods of insomnia, and Charles Dickens family was able to trace the fortunes of his puppets by his face at the breakfast table. When Little Nell died Dickens broke down utterly as if he had lost his own daughter, and much of Hall Caine's best work had been done during periods of insomnia.

It was obvious, however, that despite the absence of sleep brain repair was going on all the time. In children, however, insomnia might be prognostic of grave evil. In conclusion, Sir James Crichton-Browne insisted on the importance of only indulging in light recreation before going to bed.