p. 225 | CONCERNING BEDROOMS by Sophy Winthrop

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 19, 1881

CONCERNING BEDROOMS.

By Sophy Winthrop

A PHYSICIAN was lately called to prescribe for a young lady who lives in one of the most charming villages in Learnedville.

"Nothing the matter with her," she declared, "nothing but terrible headaches." Every morning she waked with a headache and it lasted nearly half the day. It had been going on for months—ever since they moved into their new house. The old doctor tried all the old remedies and they all failed. Riding and archery were faithfully tested, study and practice were cheerfully given up. Nothing did any good.

"Will you let me see your bedroom?" asked the doctor one day, and he was shown up into the prettiest little nest imaginable.

Nothing wrong about the ventilation. The windows were high and broad and left open every night, the patient said. The bed stood in one corner against the wall.

"How do you sleep?" says the doctor.

"On my right side at the back of the bed, with my face to the wall. Lou likes the front best."

"The dickens she does!" says the doctor. "So do I. Will you do me the favor to wheel the bed into the middle of the room and sleep so for a week? Then let me know about the headaches."

Doctors are so absurd! The middle of the room indeed! And there were the windows on one side, and the two doors on the other two sides, and the mantel with its Macrame lambrequin on the fourth side. There was no place for the bed but just where it stood, in the corner.

"Never mind! Sacrifice your lambrequin," urged the doctor—"just for a week, you know."

The lambrequin was sacrificed, the bed moved where it had free air on both sides, and the headaches disappeared.

It may be only an exceptionally delicate system that would be induced to actual headache by breathing all night the reflected air from a wall. Yet possibly some of the morning dullness we know of may be traceable to a like cause. At any rate, plenty of breathing space around a bed can only be an advantage to everybody.

In visiting three or four newly-built and beautiful houses, recently, the lack of a good place for the bed was the most striking feature of the bedrooms. Some of these rooms were finished in shining mahogany, ebony, or walnut. Some were hung with rich modern tapestry. All were elegant and a few were airy. But in the most of the best of them, where was the bed to stand? A bay-window, perhaps, would occupy the middle of one side, another window another, a door another, a mantlepiece another.