SLEEPING AFTER LUNCH

Evening Star, Issue 19521, 31 March 1927, Page 2

SLEEPING AFTER LUNCH

DOCTOR'S DENUNCIATION •; HARRASSED MOTHER EXEMPTED.' Who are the people that, physiologically speaking, earn “ forty winks ” ■ after their midday meal? A doctor who discussed this question would admit the right of only one class the privilege, apart, of course, from the aged and invalids who indulge themselves under doctor's orders. The favored people are mothers who personally supervise their children’s midday meal. “A mother who has prepared lunch and presided at the children’s meal,” said the doctor, “is not only tired out, but is not allowed sufficient time in which to digest her food. A rest of twenty minutes’ duration or so in a quiet room, after the children have returned to school, will do her all the ' good in the world.” The discussion encouraged the doctor to elaborate his contention that post- • luncheon naps for the majority _ of ■ people are unnecessary, even vicious, - and led him on to a denunciation of the general increase in lunch-hour leisure which he has seen in his time. /‘The only justification for sleeping after lunch which I can think of, he said, “apart from the people I have • indicated and whose special conditions create a special need, is boredom such as seems to be suffered by retired

people who spend too much of their time in cluhs. “The desire for sleep after the midday meal, so far as people are concerned whose work does not make any 1 rush ’ demands on them, indicates either that they have eaten too much or are not well.”