Finally, all clothing worn next the skin should be very frequently washed, for it is absorbing all day and every day the waste products of the skin; it should also be well aired before use and kept if possible, not in hermetically sealed drawers, but where air can get to it.
Perhaps no change of fashion in the last fifty years is greater than the change that has come over bedrooms. Fifty years ago the ordinary healthy man (if he could afford it) slept in a deep feather-bed into which his unfortunate body sank and was smothered; his bed was probably draped at the head with large curtains so as to prevent anything like a movement of air getting to him (not that it was very likely, for he kept his windows shut and curtained), while in case of anything so untoward happening he had an additional protection in the shape of a nightcap, while over the whole bed, as likely as not, was a heavy quilt. In fact, the bed gear of fifty years ago was all that bed gear should not be. By degrees the curtains were taken down, the feather mattress was supplanted by a thinner and harder affair which got its elasticity from springs below it, windows were opened, and the nightcap wore out and was not replaced. In fact, the proper rule—the utmost coolness consistent with comfort—came in. The head should be cool, the body not hot nor smothered airlessly beneath masses of coverlets. The feet, however, unless naturally warm, may with advantage have a rug thrown over them; for, if they are warm, proper circulation of the blood is ensured, and a most fruitful cause of insomnia removed.
To sum up in one sentence the general principles we have tried to lay down in this chapter, we should say, “When in doubt, open it or take it off”; the point being that you should whenever possible expose yourself to air. Think for a moment of the different régime adopted now, not for people in health, but for consumptives, from what those unfortunates suffered thirty years ago, and think also of the vastly increased percentage of recoveries. Thirty years ago patients were sent to warm enervating places, draughts and cold were treated as if they themselves were the microbes of disease. Now air, air, air, and when the damp and dulness of English winters arrives, up they go into piercing elevations of Swiss mountains. And if air will heal definite disease, we may take it completely for granted that so natural a remedy will be highly beneficial to those in health, for it must and does act as a preventive to disease, and is in itself health-giving. So also with clothing: when in doubt take it off, for the more the skin is either directly exposed or, though clad, allowed to get the maximum possible of air and light, the healthier and the more vigorous it will become; and instead of saying, “Put on a coat, or you will catch cold,” it will be nearer the truth to say, “Continue not to put on a coat and you will not catch cold.” Of course, there are an immense number of days when, especially if one is out in the open air without taking exercise, a coat is advisable, since the feeling of being cold is a natural danger signal, and it is then our business to get warm. But the habit of being cold is often due—and this is our point—to a relaxed and unvigorous condition of the skin, and the coat is, as it were, only a dose to meet a special need, whereas the rational treatment is to get the skin into such a condition that the body is less liable to feel cold. And this diminished liability to feel cold is promoted, not by covering the skin up, but by accustoming it to be uncovered.
CHAPTER VII.
SLEEP, REST AND RELAXATION.
The late Sir Andrew Clark once said that he never knew anyone die from insomnia, though he knew of many who had died from trying to cure it. To a man who really suffers from insomnia, perhaps, this is but doubtful consolation, but in any case the latter half of this great doctor’s remark is valuable. For probably more poison is taken to remedy insomnia, and on the whole with worse results, than in the alleviation of any other disease which flesh is heir to. Drugs, especially narcotics, are the most dangerous things in the world to play with, since so many, if taken at all continuously, almost necessitate a gradual increase in quantity. Besides, the morphia habit, or any habit of that sort, is, frankly, the clutch of the fiend, and it would be infinitely better to die of insomnia (were it possible) than be dragged down to that particular Hell.
But it is not of these martyrs, whose case is one for doctors (who will most likely be unable to help them), but of the ordinary man who may, perhaps, not be a regularly good sleeper, and of those who are habitually good sleepers, that we propose to speak. People who sleep well, and know nothing about other forms of rest, may, perhaps, find certain things here said, fantastic, but the problem of rest is just as fascinating as the problem of energy, and curious though it sounds, rest can be induced and improved even by exercises.
Broadly, then, rest and recuperation, which is equivalent to the act of gathering energy, and is necessary to the employment of it, may come in three fairly distinct ways, either by sleep, or by mere quiescence, or by intentional and definite relaxation. The two first are purely natural, being the instinctive demands of the brain and body after a period of activity; the third is, at first anyhow, an artificial rest, to be had always at command, and demanding more than mere quiescence to induce it.
To take sleep first, it should be a condition as automatic as breathing, but by its very nature, by the fact that, in order to arrive at it, both body and mind must pass into and through a quiescent state, so that the condition of unconsciousness may naturally come, it has many more foes than the mere taking and expelling of breath. A severe pain in the foot or any remote organ of the body will make sleep difficult, if not impossible, until exhaustion has come, whereas such a pain would not in any way prevent breathing; or, again, any anxiety or tension of mind will hinder sleep. Continued pain, of course, results in bodily exhaustion, continued anxiety in the corresponding exhaustion of the mind, the inability to think longer; but these are rather special causes of sleeplessness, which are responsible for a comparatively small percentage of those patients—for they are no less—who habitually sleep badly, either finding difficulty in getting to sleep, or awaking at timeless hours, or awaking, not to sleep again, in very early hours of the morning. These, though one can class all under the general heading of bad sleepers, are divisible into at least two distinct classes, while insomnia may arise from very different causes.
Certain general rules apply to everyone in the regulation of the bedroom, and though confirmed bad sleepers may scoff at the notion of furniture and bedgear having anything to do with their own particular thorn in the flesh, it will at any rate be harmless for them to know how a bedroom can be regulated in order to give the best possible conditions.
In the first place, then, mere stuffiness of a room will be often quite sufficient to wake an ordinarily good sleeper, and if continued, to get him into the habit of sleeping badly. If the air in a room gets exhausted of its oxygen, he will during sleep breathe through his mouth as well as his nostrils, the lungs rebelling against their starvation. This continued for several hours will by the consequent dryness of mouth and throat, and the discomfort ensuing upon it, be quite sufficient to wake him, wake him thoroughly, that is to say, with a sense of uneasiness amounting to positive discomfort. A proper bedroom, therefore, should be incapable of stuffiness, that is to say, a window should always be open, and the room be as free as possible from curtains and carpets. No doubt the absence of them (of carpet, anyhow) affects the stuffiness of a room only in a very small degree, but it has its value in this way, that the air is far freer from dust, which is an important point, if for eight hours or so out of every twenty-four you are breathing that air. But it is true that the influx of light in the early morning tends to wake some people, and the absence of curtains lets in light. For this there are two remedies, both equally simple: have blinds of the ordinary dark-blue stuff which quite effectually excludes light, or better, pass a couple of nights, three or four perhaps, in which you are awakened by light. After that you will fail to notice it, and one of the present writers, who for years thought he must awake when light came in, found after doing so once only, that it made not the slightest difference, and he who carefully drew curtains, and had the position of a strange bed altered so as to be away from the light has now often awoke, when called, in a blaze of sunshine.