WORK AND REST

Hokitika Guardian, 20 December 1930, Page 3

WORK AND REST

A STUDY OF SLEEP. (Auckland Star.) Death’s twin sist:r sleep defeats all scientiiic investigation, and is as much a mystery, even perhaps more a mystery, than death. A muscle is exhausted because its use causes the formation of lactic acid, and an exhausted muscle needs a supply of oxygen carried to it by the blood for its restoration from fatigue, but why lactic acid and why oxygen? The whole body can be brought to a point of exhaustion by the iuso, the continued unresting use, of one arm or "leg. The products of fatigue travel throughout the body. A change of occupation is but a partial rest. Committees of investigation have been long at work in England and America -studying industrial fatigue. There are a few interesting results. More and better work is done by a group of girls resting one hour (in normal working hours) daily than is done by the same, or a similar, group continually working. An ample supply of air constantly changed, and ample light (natural sunlight) both increase the output of workers and hut one degree below or one degree above the temperature of 68 degrees Fahrnheit reduces the output of workers everywhere found to be at their 'best at that moderate point of temperate climate, spring and summer heat. "When it comes to arranging the length of sleet), time for workers inquiry is defeated by the variation in results. Experience shows that eight hours’ sleep is the best average, recuperative period after a day’s hard or steady work, but there are thousands of workers who find four hours sufficient, hundreds who can “do” with leas, and a few who can sleep in a series of cat-naps collectively incalculable in duration. Ten or twelve hours’ sleep docs not enable the human body to .store up the benefits of added rest, and two men equally tired and awakened from sleep, one at six hours and one at ten hour®, show no marked difference in muscular ability. The sweet restorer T difficult to measure for the mass. There is (be question, whore do"s the mind go when the brain rests J Dreams do not come in deep nab--

sleep, they are of the pert-awake periods, and useless as guides to sle or > value. The (solution of a p ,v 'blem unsolved when f"!lv awake will sometimes come in 'naif.Peon. A so-g place mi the body will fix the attention immediately the body awakes, and a -ore .pine"' on the mind acts vnrilariv when the 1 brain bcoins to function, but the minds seems to go f-u- a W<dk when the brain is ridding itself r »f t' - products of fatigue, in«t as h’.tiwr in the garden wbi'pt mother spmeps the dining room. The industrial committees have dealt with no ,wo oyooriipent’.ng with worker® in .sil°no° and tlmn disturbed by a. noise machine. Silence id wavs gave far the best results. There is no reference to the effect of companion shin noon production or fatigue Do men work better alone, : n' eommnv w'th one another, or with a crowd’ There is an extraordinary reserve of force in most of vis. I asked a man “What is work’” and be replied “Go on working until you nan do no more, then bunk no and start again, that is work.” In a sense be was right, for weariness is not exhaustion : you ca.il generally null out a. little more from some unknown reserve of foro°>. “O sleen. it • s a blessed thing, beloved from Pole + o Pole,’’ but it 'is not invariably necessary to human life. There are on record at least six cases of men for whom sleeo ha s not been needed

(•brougliout life. Mr A. E. Heroin, of Trenton, is now eighty years old and lie lias not- .slept since he was two. He tires like other men and rests, but does not sleep. Tie has been under ’nodical observation night and day and the truth of this sierra,less ness is proved. There was a Mr Paul Kern, ol Hungary, who did not sleep for fifteen years, and others have ceased to <dr,o,i-) Lifter doing so normally) for from five to twenty years. Narcotic drugs have no ,soporfic effect upon these men. There is no record of a sleepless woman; I wonder why. -H-A.Y.