Sleep as a Rostorative

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 88

Sleep as a Rostorative

Without sound sleep neither health nor beauty can long- be retained. Much of the discomfort and nervousness that people complain of when they rise in the morning is due to the fact that each does not sleep alone. Thete is nothing that .will so de-

range the nervous system of a person who is eiiminative in "nervous force as to lie all night in bed with another who is absorbent of nervous force. The latter will sleep soundly all night, and arise .^freshed in the morning, while the former will tosa restlessly, and awake in tho morning fretful, peevish, faint-hearteci, and discouraged!. No two persons, says a medical authority, no matter who they are, shoxild habitually sleep together. The one will thrive, the other will lose. This is the law. The grandmother with her little grandchild is a case in .point. The aged! one keeps strong; the little one pines away and becomes enfeebled. A lady in middle life informed us the other day that she habitually arose in the morning nervous, worried, and weak, while her husband would sleep soundly all night. The touch of his foot even would awaken, nervousness and discomfort, while he seemed to ba wholly unaffected. ' It is wonderful how much may be done to protract existence by the habifual restorative of sound sleep. Late hotirs under mental strain are, of course, incompatible with this good work of sleep. A physician reports that he has traced the beginning of pulmonary consumption in many cases to late hours and! evening (parties, by which rest is broken and encroachments made on the constitution. If in middle age the habit of taking deficient and irregular sleep be still maintained, every source of depression, every latent form of disease, is quickened and intensified. The sleepless exhaustion allies it3elf with every other exhaustion, or it kills imperceptibly by a rapid l introduction of premature old age, which leads prematurely to dissolution. A scientific writer says that sleep, if taken at the right moment, will prevent art attack of nervous headache. If the subjects of such headaches will watch the symptoms of its coming, they can notice that it begins' with a feeling of weariness and heaviness. This is the time a sleep of anhour, or even two, as Nature guides, will effectually prevent the headache. If not; then, it will be too late, for after the attack is fairly under way it is impossible to get sleep until far into the night, perhaps. It is so common in these days for doctors to forbid! having their patients wakened to take medicines if they are asleep when Jie hour comes round that people have learned the lesson pretty well, and they generally know that sleep is better for the sick than medicine. But it is not so well knowa that sleep is a wonderful prevention of disease — better than tonic regulators and stimulants. — Times.