The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-04-14

70 ring for pens and paper in the night at
Lord B9hngbroke's to record poetry. Mar
garet, Duchess of Newcastle. kent Young
ladies about her all night ready to write at
ulctatlon the thoughts which came TO her
directly she laid her head upon the pillow.
Brindley, the great engineer, always went
to bed day or two to think out a great
scientific project, and Sir Walter Scott said
the last half hoGr in bed was tie best think
ing time in the whole day. All of this goes
to show, as the doctor says. that those po-
sltions of the body which tend to impede
the flow of blood from the brain, aud at the
same time do not obstruct its passage
through the arteries, while causing hyper
emia, produce insomnia, and should be
ayoided.n
DR.. Eccleston advocates tie food treat
ment for insomnia, ON the ground that ami
mails and babies always eat and then sleep,
and concludes that not only does the process
OF digestion aid sleep, but vice versa sleep
aids digestion. because during digestion the
stomach requires more blood and what
more natural than that the supply be fur
nished by the dormant brain, which is the
most muscular organ of the bodys The fact
that ildigesti0le food causes wakefulness he
explains by saying that insomnia comes
from the disc omfort of the labored process
of digestion, which discomfort would
have been felt if the person had
remained awake, only that oc-
cupation would have given less time to re-
alize the distress. d. Eccleston recon-
mends hot bath just before retiring, in
bath room at a temperature of 65e, gradu-
ally raised during the bath to 75e. The
patient should stoop and have the head aud
face drenched with water at 100, to dilate
b ain vessels. Next the whole body, ex-
cept the head, immersed in a bath at 9S',
the temperature increasing TO 1862 or 110o.
When the at first accelerated pulse has
fallen to slow, steady beating, the patient
should be put to sleep with warm blankets
over the extremities.
A curate in London is affi icted with in
sornnia in direct proportion to the mental
worry and absence of air and exercise he
has to endure, and finds that walking mile
or more day is the best remedy. At the
moment, he says, the best thing one can do
is to get up, drink half glass of water and
walk around the room, The slight alteration
of heat and cold seeming to produce n sop
critic effect. For permanent result, he
says: Live healthily, avoid too little and
too much exercise, food, particularly wine.
Dine lightly, eating1very little meat. and
battle an hour before dinner, not before 60
ing to bed Decide how much sleep yon
ought to have, say seven or eight hours, and
get up sternly waen- you have been il bed
the allotted time, no matter how many
hours you have been awake. Increase your
amount of air and exercise"
A most wretched lier-awake of thirty-fye
years standing, who had for ten years
thought himself happy if he could get
twenty minutes sleep in the twenty-fOur
hours, took hot water-a pint comfortably
hot one good hour between each of his three
meals, and one the last thing at night
naturally unmixed with anything else. The
first night after beginning the treatment he
slept for three hours. turned over and slept
again until morning, end he has never had
bad night since.
OF course, insomnia is most often found
among brain workers, whose brain activity
causes the flow of too great an amount Of
blood to the head The nerves controlling
the contraction of the blood cells through
geariness fail to perform their duty, and a
temporary passive congestion is established
which effec5ually prevents sleeping the
early part of the night. The vic5im should
lie with the head raised very high with
pillows. Frequently the sufferer who has
counted himself off into dreamland after
hours of misery is awakened toward morn
ing again, and sleep seems more hopeless
than ever. This awakening is due usually
to the sudden and violent contracting of
these malicious little nerves, which failed
to perform their duty in the early part of
the night, and wakefulness is caused by
lack of blood in the brain. 1t requires
strength to sleep, and this burning attack
of wakefulness is usually relieved by a cup
of beef tea, or glass of cold water may
refresh you, and set the blood again in the
right direction.
1t sounds like heresy to talk to the en-
lightened people Of this age of ventilation
and hygiene in their relation to sleep, but
still 1t isn't so very long since an entire
family who were i'll recovered because some
one was careless enough to break window
pane out and every one was too i'll to replace
it. Not so very long, either, since physi-
clan hung canary's cage beneath the can
opv of one of our handsomely curtained
beds where two people were sleeping, and
took its lifeless little body from the cage the
next morning. A word to the wise is sutf-
Gent, and every enc knows that a closed
window, heavy carpets, stuffy curtains,
fluids, vegetable life, and food of any kind
in sleeping apartments are not conducive
to healthy, refreshing sleep.
As for the number OF hours of sleep re-
quired that is question which each indi-
Vidual must answer for himself. One man
finds he can do more work in the day by
sleeping nine hours than by sleeping only
seven and working during the other two
Another man may require but seven hours
rest, and between these hours the average
must be reached. OF course, as people
grow older they seem to require less sleep.
but this may be due quite as much to their
lessened activity as to their increased years.
DR.. Wood takes an optimistic view of this
as well as other conditions of humanity,
and claims that the tendency of the times as
manifested in the shorter hours among
working people, the Saturday half holiday
system, the heightened summer vacation,
and their universally among all people
show n dacidad rpc0crnitiOu of tha i'm
portance of rest as conducive to that condi-
tinu of bodily uicnc which essures sound