SLEEP.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1524, 26 March 1886, Page 3

SLEEP.

There is no fact more clearly established in the physiology of man than this, that the brain expends its energies and itself during the hours of wakefulness, and that t'tesa are recuperated during sleep ; if the recuperation does not equal the expenditure, the brain withers—this is insanity. Thus it is that, in early English history persons who were condemned to death by being prevented from sleeping always died raving maniacs; thus it is also that those who are starved to death be* come iusane; the brain is not nourished, and they cannot sleep. The practical inferences are these : 1 Those who think most, who do most brain work, require most sleep. 2. That time saved from necessary sleep is infallibly destructive to mind, body, and estate. 3. Give yourself, your children, your servants give all that are under you the fullest amouut of sleep they will take, by compelling them to go to bed at some regular, earJy hour, and in rise the morning the moment they awake ; and within a fortnight Nature, with all the regularity of the rising sun, will unlooss the bonds of sleep the moment enough repose has been secured for the wants of the system. This is the only safe and sufficient rule; and as to the question how much sleep one requires, each must be a rule for himself; great Nature will never fail to write it out to the observer under thu regulations just given. Dr Hall says : " Ooe of the very worst economies of time is that filched from necessary sleep. The wholesale but blind commendation of early risiug is as mischievous in practice as it is wrong in theory. Early rising is a crime against the noblest part of our physical nature, unless it is preceded by an early retiring. Multitudes of business men in large citus count it a saving if they can make a journey of a hundred or two miles ut night by steamboat or railway. It is a ruinous mistake. It never fails to be followed by a want of general well-feeling for several days after, if, indeed, the man does not return home actually sick, or so near it us to be unfit for ali attention to his business. It is always important that he should have his wits about him j that the mind should bo fresh aud vigorous ; the spirit lively, buoyant, and cheerful, ]So man can say that it is thus with him after a night on a railroad or on the shelf of a steamboat. The first great receipt for sound, connected, and refreshing sleep, is physical exercise. We caution parents particularly not to allow their children to be waked up of mornings \ let Nature wake them up. She will not do it prematurely. But have a care that they go to bed at an early hour; let it be earlier and earlier, until it is found that they wake up themselves in full time to dress for breakfast.. Being waked up earlier, and allowed to engage in difficult or any studies late, and just before retiring, has given many a beautiful and promising child brain/ever, or determined ordinary ailments to the production of water on the brain."