The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1886-11-26
HOW LONG TO SLEEP.
Sleep a Wel-Defned State of Natur
I9I,rfI, r,nfcnI Errnn4fnr


It is manifestly impossible to Law
down any universally applicable rule
as to the number of hours which it is
desirable to sleep. Probably no two
persons require the same amount of
slumber. and it is scarcely 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 nerve and muscle power on
several days. We do not, of course,
mean to imply that sleep is the season
of recuperation. That is unlikely in
view of the ascertained facts in rela-
ton to tissue-feeding and physiological
change; but it is nevertheless true in
practice that prolonged or exception
ally severe eXertion, whether of
brain or muscle, requires a cor
respondingly lengthy or deep repose.
Speaking 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,
as it were, unstrung, and may recover
its elasticity during the recurring pc
RODS 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 as any avoidable demand
on its energy is cOncerned-during
sleep. The Irishman who explained
that short sleep did for him
because when he slept he 'paid
attention 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 its
nature and in its effects. We can not
discuss the physiology of sleep in this
place, but two or three propositions,
based on experience and observation,
may be briefly set down by way of sug-
gestiOn worth thinking out for special
application in individual cases. Sleep
is a distinctly natural function, and
therefore, both as regards its induction
and management, ought to be per-
formed in conformity with natural
laws. That it is a state which should
recur periodically is evident from the
rotation of day and night, and approx
imately we ought to go to sleep when
the natural light fails and wake with
the sunrise. 1t will therefore be evil
dent that nature meant us to sleep long
er in the winter than in the summer,
for the sufficiently plain reason that the
maintenance of animal heat during the
cold season necessarily requires larger
consumption of energy than is expend-
ed on this vital purpose in the warm
season. 1t has been alleged that the
organism takes in and stores just as
much oxygen during sleep as it has ex-
pended during the waking hours, and
when the reserves are replenished
wakes; but this is only half-truth, in
so far as it is a truth at all. What
happens is rather a rest from the rapid
movements of waking. life, during
which the slower activities of function
have time to Overtake the faster ones.
Recuperation by nutrition is more tar
dy process than consumption by work
and heat production, and if the hare
were not to sleep the tortoise would be
left hopelessly behind. 1t 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 laggard
nutritive processes to overtake the i'm
petuOus destructive processes. Prac-
ticallY, therefore, q man should sleep
until he is refreshed. The mistake
many persons make is in attempting to
govern what must be a matter of in
stinct by volitional control. When we
are weary we ought to sleep, and when
we wake should get up. There are no
more vicious habits than adopting
measures to keep awake" or employ
ing articles, or, still worse, resorting
to drugs and other devices to induce or
prolong sleep. Doing is the very
Generalization of the sleep function,
and from the perniciOus habit arises
much of the so-called sleeplessness-
more accurately wakefulness-fro
which multitudes suffer. That day is
not the time for sleep is evident upon
the face of the fact that nature has pro-
vided the night, wherein no man can
or ought to work. Instead of trying to
Law down arbitrary rules as to the length
of sleep, it would be wiser in a common
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 we'll done, the time of
waking will not be earlier than sunrise.
The difficulties about sleep and Sleep
lessness-apart from dreams-are al
most uniformly fruits of a perverse re-
fusal to conform to the laws of nature.
Take, for example the case of man
who can not sleep at night, or rather
who, having fallen asleep, wakes. If
he is what is called strOng-minded, he
thinks, or perhaps reads, and falls
asleep again. This being repeated
laws the foundation of a habit of wax
ing in the night and thinking or read
ing to induce sleep. Before long the
thinking or reading fails to induce
sleep, and habituaI sleeplessness Oc-
ours, for which remedies are sought
and mishief is done. If the wakeful
man would only rouse himself on wax
ing, and get up and do a full days
work, of any sort, and not doze during
the day, when next the night came
round his sixteen or twenty hours of
wakefulnesS would be rewarded by a
sleep of nine or ten hours in length;
and one or two of these manful strug-
giles against a perverted tendency to
abnormal habit would rectify the error
and avert the calamity. The cure for
sleeplessness must be natural, because
sleep is a state of natural rhythmical
function. You can not tamper with
the striking movement of clock with
out injuring it, and you can not tamper
with orderly recurrence of sleep with
out impairing the very constitution OF
things on which the orderly perform
ance of that function depends.-LO71dOD
Lancet.
Mr.. Pond, the Government analyst
of New Zealand, has proved by actual
experiment that the dust thrown out
during the recent volcanic eruptions is
of a highly fertilizing kind. He OBJ
tanned samples of the dust from three
different places, and sowed aqUantity of
caad- in aanh Tho