Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-11-03
10 OVERCOME INSOMNIA
From . Lecture by J. Fl. Kell0Gg, M. D.,
 Battle Creek SanItarlum.

From Lecture by J. Fl. Kcll0GR, M. D.,
 Battle Creek sanItarium. .
 A remedy which will cure great many cases of insomnia is to go to bed without supper. This is contrary to the popular notion that one must have something in the stomach in order to go to sleep. It 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 dozing, 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 a much greater degree than sleep; but it has been proven, by careful experiment, that digestion is retarded during sleep, because the process requires 8 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 0A"6Jo pNOoOhbS obgoON SA0 ASON 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 solu- tion of these puzzling problems of the physiologist, 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- jected into the ear of a rabbit if it be that voided in the day time, will cause the animal to die in a state of coma, showing that it is narcotic in it's influence, while that of the night brings on convulsions, showing that its poisonous principle leads to undue activity. Probably the brain becomes 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 poisonous character. Suppose l keep my arm in constant motion until the accumulation of broken down tis- sue is so great as to bring on ! temporary paralysis? If left unaid- ed to recuperate, 1t 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 a recognized fever of fatigue indicated by rise of temperature. Experiments were made by. taking i blood from the veins of some exhausted French soldiers and injecting it into 1 the veins of dogs, when the animals | showed all the symptoms of excessive fatigue; alth4ggb thev Raad sheeTb Tbi&i "tSHSf "SSf
 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 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 a quan- 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 ! 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 sleepy" It is because the imperfect digestion pro- duces 8 torpor and dullness which is a morbid, unnatural condition. Most ba. bles are fed too much and too often, and three-fourths of them are made dys- peptics before they are five years old. , Children who go to sleep with their stomachs full are apt to wake up cry. ing and to have night terrors. How ever baby is but young animal with very little brain activity and so the vital forces can be bestowed upon diges- tion better than in a grown person. Reported by Helen l.. Manning.