SLEEP IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO LONGEVITY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XIX, 7 May 1898, Page 590

SLEEP IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO LONGEVITY.

Much has been written lately concerning the phenomena of sleep. Many persons have aired their views on the subject. Some assert, says the ‘Medical Record,’ that people as a rule sleep too long, while others are of the opposite opinion. Dr. Andrew Wilson has recently made some apropos remarks on the matter. He first cites instances of celebrated men who needed a small amount of sleep, and says:—‘Humboldt, who lived to be 89, is said to have declared that when he was young two hours’ sleep was enough for him, and that the regula tion seven or eight hours of repose represented an unnecessary prolongation of the time of somnolence. It is also said that Sir George Eliott, who commanded at the siege of Gibraltar, never indulged in more than four hours’ sleep while the siege lasted, and that little affair occupied at least four years. Sir George died at the age of 84. Dr. Legge, professor of Chinese at Oxford, who died recently at the age of eighty-two, was declared to be satisfied with five hours of sleep only, and rose regularly at three a.m. What do sueh cases prove? Assuming the correctness of the details, they prove only that certain men (and very few men, I should say) are able to recuperate their brain cells more quickly than the bulk of their fellows. They are the exceptions which, by their very opposition to the common run, prove the rule that a good sound sleep of seven or eight hours’ duration represents the amount of repose necessary for the average man or woman. It would be a highly dangerous experiment for the ordinary individual to attempt, to curtail his hours of repose, and it must not be forgotten that in this matter of sleep we have to take into account the question of the daily labour and the nature of the work in which the individual engages. In the case of Dr. Legge we have a picture of the student whose labour is solely’ of the intellectual kind, involving little drain on the muscular system. In the case of Sir G. Eliott we have an active commander. who. in addition to the mental anxieties involved in the conduct of a long siege, had no doubt a fair amount of physical exertion to undergo. But, while the case of the professor may be explicable on the ground that his five hours’ sleep compensated him for any wear and tear his quiet life presented, we may fall back in the instance of the general on the theory of a special organisation. set, as it were, so as to satisfy itself with a limited amount of sleep. The personal equation, in short, plus the kind or character of a man’s work, determines the duration of bis repose: and that the average period required by the ordinary individual in health is from seven to eight hours is the one opinion confirmed by the collective experience of the civilised race.’