Morning journal and courier., 1886-10-23
How Long to Sleep.


 It is manifestly impossible to lay down any
 universally applicable rule as to the number
 of hours which it. is desirable to sleep.
 Probably no two persons require precisely
 the same amount of slumber, and it is scarce
 ly likely that any person needs the same
 length of sleep on all occasions. Even the
 most monotonous lives involve the expendi-
 ture of varying quantities of energy, and
 make differing demands on the stores of
 do not of course mean to imply that sleep is
 the season of recuperation. That is unlikely
 in view of the ascertained facts in relation
 to tissue feeding and physiological change;
 but it is nevertheless true in practice that
 prolonged or exceptionally severe exertion, whether of brain or muscle, requires a cor respondingly lengthy or deep repose. Speak ing broadly, sleep is the state in which the fires are, so to say: damped down and the machinery has opportunity for cooling. The bow is, it were, unstrung and may recover it's elasticity during the recurring periods of slumber. The great point is to secure what Bichat characterized as general sleep made up of particular sleeps. The whole body should be rested-so far any avoidable demand on it's energy is concerned-during sleep. The Irishman who explained that a short sleep did for him because when he slept he "paid attintion to t." uttered truth in his witticism. If sleep be thorough, then a short spell will do more good than a much longer duration of sleep that is incomplete and imperfect both in it's nature and in it's effects. We cannot discuss the physiology of sleep in this place, but two or three pro- positions based on experience and observa- tion, may be briefly set down by way of sug- gestion worth thinking out for special ap- plication in individual cases. Sleep is dis tinctly natural function, and therefore both as regards it's induction and management ought to be performed in conformity with natural laws. That 1t is state which should recur periodically is evident from the rota- tion of day and night, and approximately we ought to go to sleep when the natural light fails and wake with the sunrise. It will therefore be evident that nature meant us to sleep longer in the winter than in the sum mer, for the sufficiently plain reason that the maintenance of animal heat during the cold season necessarily requires larger consump- ton of energy than is expended on this vital purpose in the warm season. It has been alleged that the organism takes in and stores just as much oxygen during sleep as 1t has expended during the waking hours, and when the reserves are replenished wakes; but this is only half truth in far it is a truth at all. What happens is rather 8 rest the HOVcncutS Ol WdkinR 1lIC, during which the slower activities of func- tion have time to overtake the faster ones. Recuperation by nutrition is a more tardy process than consumption by work and heat production, and if the hare were not to sleep the tortoise would be left hopelessly behind. It is essential to health that the tortoise should not lag far in the rear, and sleep must be just as long as will enable the lag gard nutritive processes to overtake the inn petuous destructive processes. Practically therefore a man should sleep until he is re- freshed The mistake many persons make is in attempting to govern what must be 8 matter of instinct by volitional control. When we are weary we ought to sleep and when we wake we should get up. There are no me re vicious habits than adopting meas ures to f'keep awake' or employing artifces, or still worse, resorting to drugs and other devices to induce or prolong sleep. Dozing is the very demoralization of the sleep func- tion, and from this pernicious habit arises much of the so-called sleeplessness-more accurately wakefulness-from which multi tudes suffer. That day is not the time for sleep is evident from the face of the fact l that nature has provided the night, wherein no man can or ought to work. Instead of trying to lay down arbitrary rules as to the | length of sleep, it would be wiser in com mon sense and physiological way to say, work while it is day; sleep when you are | weary, which will be at night if the day has | been spent in honest and energetic labor. When you wake rise; and if the days work | has been sufficiently well done the time of waking will not be earlier than sunrise. The difficulties about sleep and sleeplessness-