Insanity: Its Causes and Prevention

by Henry Putnam Stearns

Unfortunately for society, this man has not been alone in advocating such views. There have been others who, in their teachings, have greatly underestimated the importance of an abundance of sleep as a means of securing and maintaining a high standard of health. I think that most persons, especially of the laboring classes, in cities as also in the country, sleep too little. This is true as to adult persons, but to a much larger extent of children, and it is hardly possible to over-estimate the good effects arising from an abundance of sleep upon the brain of the child.

There are certain physiological and anatomical conditions existing which tend to show why this is true.

1. The brain at an early age attains a size out of proportion to other organs and members of the body. This is especially true of that portion of the brain supposed to be concerned in mental operations, while those portions whose office is connected with the organic life of the system are less advanced. After twelve or fourteen years of age, the relative rapidity of development as to size becomes changed, and other portions of the system increase more rapidly.

2. The cells of the hemispheres of the brain contain a considerably larger amount of water during the younger periods of life than they do during the adult period. One of the results of this condition of the brain is that of less stability of character, and a larger measure of susceptibility. It is more sensitive and easily disturbed by external surroundings, while the influences which act upon it, in connection with its daily experiences, tend to create a much more rapid metamorphosis of its tissues.

The nerve tissue of the brain in adult life is the most unstable in its elemental composition of that of any organ, but in childhood and youth the change resulting in degeneration and restoration of tissue is much more rapid than at any other period. Hence the importance of frequent and considerably long-continued periods of sleep and inactivity of this organ.

Now, my observation and experience lead me to believe that young children in our cities sleep far too little to enable the brain to receive the largest benefit from it; that they are out on the streets, or employed at tasks, long after they should have been in bed. In many portions of our large cities there exist excitement and noise, which are quite sufficient to prevent sleep, until the system is very greatly fatigued, and the nervous elements exhausted. Parents are frequently thoughtless and careless in this respect, and the children are left out on the street or visiting at neighbors’ houses until too late an hour.

A teacher in a public school informs me that one of the greatest hindrances in the advancement of some of her scholars, lies in the fact that one or two nights of every week these children are out at musical or dancing parties, or attending some place of public amusement, so that the period of sleep is greatly abridged, and the brain has not recuperated its energy so as to be able to study. The sensitive tissue is in a condition of too great weakness to be much used, and in consequence the difficulty of learning lessons is greatly increased.

Again, children are often called in the morning, long before enough sleep has been secured to refresh the brain, and employed in different ways, perhaps in attending to some piece of machinery in a large factory, which is filled with dust and the noise of thousands of wheels, and kept there ten or twelve hours a day; and the brain is not allowed to sleep for sixteen or seventeen hours.

Now, one of the effects of these long periods of wakefulness and over-activity is to check the normal development of the brain, to stint its growth, and give it a twist from which it never recovers. This habit, formed in childhood, frequently extends into adult life, and becomes so fixed that it is difficult for the brain afterward to change its custom. The period of wakefulness tends to increase so that sleep is limited to six or seven instead of eight or nine hours.

That man who regularly and soundly sleeps his eight or nine hours a day should be the man capable of large physical or mental work; moreover, he is the man who lasts longest; his system becomes daily recuperated, and he has the largest prospect of reaching his threescore and ten, while yet his system is in a degree of health; while his neighbor, less favored in this respect, becomes old at sixty if he chances to live so long.