The natural duration of sleep is eight hours out of the twenty-four, and those who can secure this lead the soundest lives. It is best taken from ten o'clock till six, and it is most readily obtained by cultivating it as an automatic procedure. All stimulants, all excitements, all excessive fatigues, all exhaustions pervert sleep even if they do not prevent it. The room in which sleep is taken should be the best ventilated and the most equably warmed room in the house. The air of the room should be maintained at the natural standard of 60° Fah., and the body of the sleeper should always be kept completely warm. The bed should be soft and yielding. A regular tendency to sleep at other hours than the natural is a sure sign of error of habit or of nervous derangement.
XVIII
Dress, to be perfectly compatible with healthy life, should fit loosely, should be light, warm, and porous, should be adapted to the season as to colour, should be throughout every part of the clothing, upper as well as under, frequently changed, and should be, at all times, scrupulously clean. The wearing of clothes until they are threadbare, is an invariable error in all that respects the health, to say nothing of the comfort of the wearer. All bands or corsets which in any way restrict the course of the blood in any part of the body are directly injurious. Dresses dyed with irritating dyestuffs ought to be carefully avoided.
XIX
Connected with cleanliness of clothing, as a means of health, is personal cleanliness. Perfected action of the skin, so essential to the perfect life, can only be obtained by thorough ablution of the whole body. The ablution ought, strictly, to be performed once in every twenty-four hours. It is best to train the body to the use of cold water through all seasons, so that the requirement for water of raised temperature may not become a necessity. The simplest and best bath is the ordinary sponge-bath. Plungings, splashings, showers, and the like are mere pastimes. The occasional use of the hot air or Turkish bath is an important adjunct to the means of maintaining health.
CARE OF THE EYES
Buel P. Colton
[“Physiology, Experimental and Descriptive,” by Buel P. Colton, Professor of Natural Science in the Illinois State Normal University, is a capital text-book which may be read as gainfully at home as in school or at college. Throughout its chapters are excellent directions for the care of health and strength. It is published by D. C. Heath & Co. Boston. 1898. The following extract was revised by Dr. Casey A. Wood, an eminent oculist of Chicago]