CONCERNING SLEEP.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 289, 13 December 1870, Page 2

CONCERNING SLEEP.

Titem: nre thousands of busy people who die every year for want of sleep. It may be that too much sleep injures some; but in an excitable people, and in our intense business habits, there is far more mischief for want of sleep that from too much of it. Sleeplessness becomes a disease. It is the precursor of insanity. When it does not reach that sad result, it is still full of peril, as well as of suffering. Thousands of men have been indebted for bad bargains, for lack of courage for ineffectiveness, to loss of sleep.

It is curious that all the popular representations of sleeping and waking are the reverse of the truth. We speak of sleep as the image of death, and of our waking hours as the image of life. But the activity is the result of some form of decomposition in the body. Every thought, still more every motion, any volition wastes some pai-t of the nervous substance, precisely as flame is producer! by wasting the fuel. It is the death of some part of the physical substance that produces the phenomena of intelligent and voluntary life On the <,ther hand, sleep is not like death ; for it is the period in which the waste of the system ceases or is reduced to its minimum Sleep repairs the wastes wi.ich waking hours have made. It rebuilds the system. The night is the repair-shop of the body. Every part of the body is silently overhauled, and all the organs, tissues, and substance, are repleished. Waking consumes, sleep replaces; waUing exhausts, sleep repairs ; waking in death, sleep is life. Ibo man who sleeps little repairs little ; if he sleeps poorly, he repairs poorly. It'he uses up in a day less blnm he accumulates at night he will gain in health and vigour. If houses up all he gains at night lie will just hold his own. If lie uses more by day than he gathers at night ho will lose. And if this last process be long continued, he must succumb. A man who wotild be a good worker must see to it that he is a good sleeper. Human life is like a mill; souietiniea the stream is so copious that one needs care but little about his supply. Now, often, the stream that turns the mill needs to be economised. A dam is built to hold a large supply. The mill runs the pond pretty low through the day, but by shutting down the gate, the nioht refills the pond, and the wheels go merrily round again the next day. Once iv a while, when spring rains are copious and freshets overflow, the mill may rim night and day: but tins is rare. Ordinal ily the mill should run by day and the pond ill! up by

night. A man lists as much force in him as ho has provided for by sleep. The quality of action especially mental activity, depends upon the quality of sleep. If day-time is the loom in •which men weave their purposes, night ia the

time when the threads are laid in and the filling prepared Men need on an average eight hours or sleep a-day, or one-third of their whole tirae. A man of lymphatic temperament may require nine. A nervous temperament may require hut seven, or six, and instances have been known in which four hours have been known to be completely sufficient. The reason is very plain. A lymphatic man is sluggish in alibis fdnetions. He moves slowly, thinks slowly, e-its slowly, digests slowly, and sleeps slowly, that is, all the restorative acts of his system go on slowly, in analogy with his temperament. Bnt a nervous man acts quickly in everything, -by night or by day. When awake, he does more in an hour than a sWvgish man in two hours ; and so in his sleep? He sleeps faster, and his system nimbly repairs in six hours what it would take another one eight hours to perform. Every man must sleep according to his temperament. Bat eight hours is th- average. If oue requires a little more or a little less, he will find it out for himself. Whoever by work, pleasure, sorrow, or by any other cause, is regularly diminishing his sleep, is destroying his life. A man may hold out for a time, but Nature keeps close accounts, and no man can dodge her settlement. We have seen an impoverished railroad that could not keep the track in order, nor spare the engines to be thoroughly repaired. Every year track and equipment deteriorated. By-and.by comes a crash, and the road is in a heap of confusion and destruction. So it is with men. They cannot spare time to sleep enough. They slowly run behind. Premature wrinkles, weak eyes, depression of spirits, failure of digestion, feebleness in the morning and overwhelming melancholy—these and I other signs show a general dilapidation. If, now, sudden calamity causes an extraordinary pressure, they go down under it. They have no resources to draw upon. They have been living up to the verge of their whole vitality every day. There is a grent deal of intemperance be-sick-3 that of tobacco, opium, or brandy. Men arc dissipated who over-tax their system all day and under sleep every night. Some men arc dissipated by physical stimulant, and some by social, and some by professional mid commercial. But a man who dies of delirium ircmens is no more a drunkard and a suicide than the lawyer, the minister, or the merchant that works excessively all day and sleeps but little all night. — Rev. H. Ward Beechcr.