It is better to go to sleep on the right side. If one goes to sleep on the left side the operation of emptying the stomach of its contents is like drawing water from a well. After going to sleep let the body take its own position. If you sleep on your back, especially soon after a hearty meal, the weight of the digestive organs and that of the food, resting upon the great vein of the body, near the backbone, compresses it, and arrests the flow of the blood more or less. If the arrest is partial, the sleep is disturbed, and there are unpleasant dreams. For persons who eat three times a day it is amply sufficient to make the last meal of bread-and-butter, and a cup of some warm drink. No one can starve on it; while a perseverance in the habit soon begets a vigorous appetite for breakfast, so promising of a day of comfort.—Hall’s Journal of Health.
The Hair suddenly changing Colour.
Dr. Davy has read to the British Association an interesting paper “On the Question, whether the Hair is or is not subject to Sudden Changes of Colour.” This he decides in the negative, explaining away the evidence on which the contrary belief has become popular; and also maintaining with regard to seemingly analogous phenomena, such as the becoming white of the ptarmigan, and many animals and birds in winter, that it is through moult and not change of colour in feather or hair.
Nevertheless, in the biography of Montaigne, the celebrated French essayist, we read:—“Among others whose acquaintance Montaigne made in the bath-room, was Seigneur d’Andelot, formerly in the service of Charles V. and governor for him of St. Quentin. One side of his beard and one eyebrow were white; and he related that this change came to him in an instant. One day as he was sitting at home, with his head leaning on his hand, in profound grief at the loss of a brother, executed by the Duke of Alva as accomplice of Counts Egmont and Horne, when he looked up and uncovered the part which he had clutched in his agony, the people present thought that flour had been sprinkled over him.”
Mr. D. P. Parry, Staff-surgeon, at Aldershott, writes the following very remarkable account of a case of which he says he made memoranda shortly after the occurrence:—“On February 19, 1858, the column under General Franks, in the south of Oude, was engaged with a rebel force at the village of Chanda, and several prisoners were taken; one of them, a Sepoy of the Bengal army, was brought before the authorities for examination, and I being present had an opportunity of watching from the commencement the fact I am about to record. Divested of his uniform and stripped naked, he was surrounded by the soldiers, and then first apparently became alive to the dangers of his position; he trembled violently, intense horror and despair were depicted in his countenance, and although he answered the questions addressed to him, he seemed almost stupified with fear; while actually under observation, within the space of half-an-hour, his hair became grey on every portion of his head, it having been when first seen by us the glossy jet black of the Bengalee, aged about 24. The attention of the bystanders was first attracted by the sergeant, whose prisoner he was, exclaiming, ‘He is turning grey,’ and I with several other persons watched its progress. Gradually but decidedly the change went on, and a uniform greyish colour was completed within the period above named.”
Consumption not hopeless.
Sir Edward Wilmot, the physician, was, when a youth, so far gone in Consumption, that Dr. Radcliffe, whom he consulted, gave his friends no hope of his recovery, yet he lived to the age of ninety-three; upon which Dr. Heberden notes: “This has been the case with some others, who had many symptoms of Consumption in youth.”
The life of Sir Hans Sloane was protracted by extraordinary means: when a youth, Sloane was attacked with spitting of blood, which interrupted his education for three years; but by abstinence from wine and other stimulants, and continuing, in some measure, this regimen ever afterwards, he was enabled to prolong his life to the age of ninety-three years; exemplifying the truth of his favourite maxim—that sobriety, temperance, and moderation, are the best preservatives that nature has granted to mankind.
Change of Climate.
The difference in disease produced by change to warmer or colder climate has been thus ably illustrated by Dr. Graves: