The nature and treatment of gout / [William Henry Robertson].

  • Robertson, William Henry, 1810-1897.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature and treatment of gout / [William Henry Robertson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    kept by their own irregularities, as to eating, drink- ing, exercise of head, or of body, in such a state of unceasing change of circumstances, that four hours’ sleep may be the largest amount obtainable in the twenty-four hours at one time, and nine or ten hours may be so expended at another time. The habit of regularity in the intellectual pursuits, in _ the exercise taken, in the food and drink used, and _ in the hours of going to bed and rising from it, will do much towards rendering the amount of sleep required, and to be commanded, regular and mode- _ rate; and this, in its turn, will have much effect | in regulating the nervous system, and preserving steadily that due balance of the supply and the expenditure of the system, which is so necessary to its health, and does so much in lessening morbid predisposition of all kinds. Excessive sleep adds to plethoric tendencies by diminishing the expen- diture of the system, but, at the same time, it seriously diminishes the vascular energies, and _oppresses the powers of the nervous system,—the congestive state consequent upon which, renders the organs of excretion sluggish in their action ; and thus, too much sleep becomes an important predisposing cause of disease, and a powerful means of aggravating existing morbid tendencies. To go to bed early is a means of avoiding the un- due expenditure of the nervous power, and the ex- citement, and the resulting exhaustion, which such expenditure produces,—and a heavy, protracted, and then disturbed or broken, and, perhaps, alto-