Sleep, or, The hygiene of the night / by W.W. Hall.

  • William Whitty Hall
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sleep, or, The hygiene of the night / by W.W. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    will go out througli the accustomed channels. To prevent a country from being devastated by a rising river, not only must a dam be built, but an outlet must be opened in another direction. A Russian nobleman, childless, was banished to Siberia. His wife was permitted to share his toils and privations. They were compelled to live on the plainest fare, to live in a miserable hut, and work hard every day. At the end of fifteen years, they had a house full of healthy children. In this case, the power of reproduction was lost through those excessive indulgences which are inseparable from a life of idleness and voluptuous ease. Hard-working peoples are the most prolific, as witness the Israelites in the laborious service of Pharaoh. In a recent census taken in one of the towns of Massachusetts, it appeared that although the foreign population was less than the native, a smaller number of Irish fami- lies gave more births in one year than a larger num- ber of American. An Irishman does more hard work than an American. Idleness predisposes to an excessive indulgence of the propensities, and this very indulgence increases the desires; thus being over-used, they become powerless, inefficient; that upon which they thus feed inordinately, destroys them. A state of labor is the natural habitual state of man ; animal indulgences, incidental, occasional; and in proportion as this law is reversed, in such proportion does it tend to the extinction of the race. The object of this extended statement, is to im- press on the mind that the natural, safe, and efficient means of correcting all nervous derangements, is to give more rest to the parts deranged or disturbed, and so to change the modes of life as to send out the nervous power constantly being generated in the sys- tem through other channels, thus giving those which are overworked time for recuperation. It would be
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