More Sleep.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 137, 25 June 1872, Page 7

More Sleep.

A writer in the Chicago Tribune expresses himself on the necessity of sound sleep and plenty of it: —We have all been educated to believe that the time given to bed is lost, and we can gain all ,the hours we steal from it. Children have been taught that prompt rising in the morning is a beautiful thing. I am not sorry, therefore, that one of the medical faculty, Dr Hall, has had the good sense to tell the Avorld that children, until the age of eighteen, and old and feeble people, (and he might as well have said everybody), need ten hours' sleep ; that bouncing suddenly out of bed in the morning is as hurtful as it is disagreeable : that fifteen or twenty minutes spent in gradually waking up, stretching the limbs, and letting the blood resume its wonted circulation, is time well spent. For the sudden sending of the blood to the heart is a severe shock, and the person who gets up in this hasty and reckless manner is certain to be drowsy by mid-day, unless he or she be an editor or a belle, and does not get up till afternoon. I concur in this—in fact, I always knew that this was true ; and think further that pulling anybody out of bed ought to be a State prison offence, and that conviction for it could be had before any of our ordinary sleepy juries—if they were wideawake enough to hear the evidence. The instinct of children against early and especially sudden rising, is well founded ; and it is pleasant to have the assurance that the leaimed faculty confirm a long and growing conviction, that it is not a sin to lie in bed until the second bell rings. It is the experience of the majority of people that the most delicious moments of the whole day are those when they ought to get up and do not. Hereafter let them linger in this delightful borderland with a quiet conscience. No ma 1 can be at his best in any hour unless he has given as many hours to solid sleep as his svstem requires. The demands of business and the exactions of society keep most of us out of bed unmercifully, and in time we get jadedly used to the unnatural life, and take credit to ourselves that we can do with the fewest hour 3of sleep. It is a great mistake. There have been great men who were able to accomplish a great amount of work with little sleep ; but we may be sure that if we want to be great men, or what is more important in this day, great women, we shall reach the goal soonest by being good sleepers. That was an honourable epitaph on the Dutchman's tombstone—" lie vas a gut sleeper." It will not be said of many of this nervous excited generation.