PILLOWS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 9, 27 February 1892, Page 211

PILLOWS.

The use of a pillow is not a matter of mere blind usage. It has a physiological basis. We sleep for the most part, on the side, and without a pillow the head would be uncomfortably and harmfully lower than the body. It will be remembered that .Jacob, when fleeing from Esau, took a stone for a pillow. He needed something for the purpose, and nothing better than a stone presented itself. Such practices are common in Africa at the present day. Bishop Taylor probably found it convenient, if not necessary, to take up with them in his travels in that laud ; for on his return to this country, he rejected the soft pillows of his friendly hosts, and, sometimes at least, substituted one of books.

Some people rest the neck instead of the head on hard pillows. In Africa extraordinary headgears make this practice necessary, and many a civilised woman has been compelled by a somewhat similar coiffure to forego both the pillow and the recumbent posture. A consideration of the physiological reason for pillows will suggest their proper thickness. They should merely bring the head to the natural level. Some pillows are much too thick. By bending the neck unduly, they interfere with the outflow of the venous blood from the head. The pillow that just fills up the space above the shoulder best suits its end.

Again, pillows of feathers are objectionable. It should be remembered that more blood, and hence more heat, goes to the head than to any other part of the body. Head-heating pillows are against the wholesome maxim, ‘ Keep the feet warm, but the head cool.' There is nothing better than the hair pillow. Further, the pillow is for the head, not for the shoulders. To rest the shoulders on the pillow defeats the very end for which it is used.

Finally, special care should be taken of infants in this matter. We have seen their heads sunken deep in the softest and thickest of pillows, and their faces, as a natural consequence, covered with great beads of perspiration. It is no wonder that children so treated die.