The American Negro., 1890-10-25
TO OVERCOME INSOMNIA.
from Lecture by j. III. Kellogg, Nj. D.,
Battle Creek Sanitarium.

A'AiJ o'''Oo VI 1uSOuunld Is IO 20 IO Ueu
without supper. This is contrary to
the popular notion that one must have
something in the stomach in order to go
to sleep. 1t is often supported by the
story of two dogs which were
given meat and then one allowed
to go to sleep and the other
was put on the chase, and after two
hours both were killed. Digestion was
found to be we'll under way in the
stomach of the dog which had been
doing, while the process had hardly
commenced in the stomach of the one
on the chase. OF course violent phys
ical exercise, coupled with excitement,
would retard digestion to much
greater degree than sleep; but it has
been proven, by careful experiment,
that digestion is retarded during sleep,
because the. process requires certain
amount of cerebral, action. All the
vital processes are lowered during sleep.
The gastric juice is poured out more
slowly digestion proceeds more slowly
and in consequence, germs, which are
always present, attack the food with
out hindrance from the gastric juice,
and So after some hours, ptomaines are
developed in the alimentary canal, and
these poisons cause sleeplessness. The
man who can not sleep has bad tongue
and bad taste in the mouth.
We may ask the question why we go
to sleep at all, and after once being
asleep, why do we wake up? AS a solu-
tion of these puzzling problems of the
Psychologist, some recent experiments
throw little light upon what has only
been answered by unsatisfactory
theories. The poisonous principle of
the urinary secretions of the day
time and those of the night have
been demonstrated by experiments
upon lower animals to have widely
different effects. About two-thirds Of
an ounce of the secretion will kill a
pound of flesh, and this proportion in
iected into the ear of rabbit, if
it be that voided in the day time, will
cause the animal to die in state of
coma, showing that it is narcotic in its
influence. while that of the night
brings on convulsions, showing that it's
poisonous principle leads to undue
1CU1 LODbbAJ OIO OIoLIA DOOOlHOo
tired from accumulation of waste, and
when this narcotic principle has accumu-
lated sufficiently in the body, we sleep.
During sleep, the opposite is going on,
and when state of surcharge of rest
lessness is reached, we waken.
The result of activity is always waste
of a poisonous character Suppose /
the accumulation of broken down It's
sue is so great as to bring on
temporary paralysis? If left unaid-
ed to recuperate, it will take three
or four hours, though under the help
full stimulus of massage, the arm could
be used again in about fifteen minutes.
There is recognized fever of fatigue
indicated by rise of temperate ture.
Experiments were made by taking
blood from the veins of some exhausted
French soldiers and injecting it into
the veins of dogs, when the animals
showed all the symptoms Of excessive
fatigue, although they had been doing
nothing There are soldiers on our
pension lists who fell from the exhaus-
tion of enforced marches and suffered
with the fever of fatigue so severely
that they never fully recovered. Many
a mother is prostrated with the fever of
fatigue after long watching at the bed
side of sick child.
Here is the point, if one takes guam
tity of food just before going to bed to
undergo decomposition or imperfect di-
gestion, the poisons thus generated are
absorbed, because the system is unable
to dispose of them and of the accumula-
tions of waste caused by activity of
brain and muscle during the day, and
the person wakes up wretched and tired
in the morning. If you must eat, take
a glass Of hot milk, which will digest in
an hour and a quarter or an hour
and half But you ask: How is
it that when I am wakeful a |
little food will put me to sleep?" 1t |
ic borouco tho porfaot ,,ro