How to Get Sleep in Hot Weather by Kate Lindsay

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 16, 1906

How to Get Sleep in Hot Weather

By Kate Lindsay

KATE LINDSAY, M. D.

THE day’s overheating, while depressing and disagreeable to endure, can be borne without serious health damage if only the night’s rest is undisturbed, and the sleeping-room kept cool enough to insure at least seven hours’ sound sleep for adults, eight or nine for youths between twelve and fifteen, and for children between five and twelve from nine to twelve hours. The infant a month old needs eighteen or twenty hours’ sleep, while up to one year, fifteen hours is needed to keep the baby good-natured and growing normally. In the hot weather it is often the want of proper, restful sleep which predisposes to the diarrhea or cholera infantum, which proves fatal to so many infants. The victim of sunstroke or heat exhaustion is often a worn-out, anemic, sleep-curtailed, indoor worker who goes to bed near midnight to toss about for hours in a hot, unaired bedroom, only to be called to arise and take up the never-ending daily tasks in the early morning. Often these unrelieved, unceasing toilers are nursing mothers, either in homes on the farm, or wives and mothers where the bread-winner’s income will not admit of household help, and one pair of hands must do all the housework and look after all the domestic needs of a growing family of little ones, besides furnishing the needed nutrition to sustain an infant life.

Preparations for the Night’s Rest

The first thing needful to secure sound sleep is to cultivate a sleep habit in the young and all others. Regular hours for rest should be observed by all, and when the retiring hour arrives, nothing avoidable should be allowed to interfere with its observance. In hot weather it is important to have the sleeping apartments as cool as possible. The upper rooms of a two-story house often become heat-storage apartments, and are hot and stifling for many hours after sunset, when all out of doors has become cool and invigorating. Why not spend the hot, sultry nights out in the cool night air? Why not devise out-of-door sleeping apartments for use in dog-day weather? It is sad to see the little ones tossing about in a hot bed in a Turkish-bath-temperature box of a room, when all nature outside is being revived by the cooling night winds. The drooping trees, grass, and all the vegetable world are reanimated during the night’s coolness. Why should mankind prolong the agonies of the day’s overheating by shutting themselves in from the night air? Next to coolness as a sleep-producing influence in hot weather, is freedom from insect annoyance. The locust, cankerworm, weevil, and a host of other vegetable-devouring insects often cause all the horrors of famine by destroying the crops. Knowledge to cope with and restrain the insect ravages on the plant world has increased. Men, by wisdom and experience, have learned how to fight and conquer the enemies of wheat, corn, potatoes, and peaches and apples. It is only lately, however, that the damage done the human body by biting, disease-transmitting insects has been fully appreciated. For centuries malaria and yellow fever have ravaged our Southern States, and hindered the development of many tropical lands suitable for the abode of the white man. It is doubtful if the Panama Canal could ever have been built had it not been for the fact that the malaria and yellow fever mosquitoes can be successfully exterminated, and these infections prevented from spreading by proper screening of both the sick and the uninfected. The same care about keeping these biting, disease-propagating insects out of the home will prevent disease and promote sound sleep. How often is the baby’s daily nap disturbed by flies! The writer has been frequently pained to see the little ones in the parks left by the careless nurses to the tender mercies of the flies and the fierce glow of a midsummer sun often shining directly in their faces. Often the poor little martyrs to hireling and maternal indifference had cried themselves hoarse, and could only sob out their woes. A long midday nap, under a cool, shady tree, or on some breezy, shaded veranda, would have made them vigorous and able to resist midsummer heat depression. Deprived of the needed quiet noonday nap, it is not surprising to read the long list of deaths under one year old in July and August. Few mothers and ordinary housekeepers realize how much can be done to promote the rest of the family and lessen nerve wear and tear by taking pains to keep out the searching noonday heat by closing the shutters on the sunny side of the house during the day, and then opening up all in the evening coolness. A wet sheet hung in the room over a screen or clothes-horse, or an electric fan, if it is available, is a good air cooler. The house roof should be thick, and the verandas broad, and all screened in. There will then be no dread of night air, for, with the shutting out of disease-inoculating insects, the phantom of night-air malaria will cease to haunt the household’s imagination.

Daytime Hints

All children under five years old should be trained to take a fore-dinner nap, and it would be well if their older brothers and sisters had the same habit. Cots and hammocks are not costly, and trees and verandas furnish the needed shade. The improved health and freedom from languor would enable them to do more work and be a means of saving instead of losing time. This sleep had best be taken before dinner, so that the meal shall be eaten by a rested, not fatigued, family. Fireless cooking apparatus would seem to offer a chance for even the house mother, with all the domestic work on her hands, to thus get a noonday nap. As little fire as possible should be used in doing the housework. The oil-stove or gas-range are much less heating than the coal or wood cookstove. Undress the baby and give it a tepid bath, then feed it, and put it away to rest in a cool room, and see how peacefully it will sleep, if its food agrees with it.

The Value of Bathing

It is more restful and hygienic at all times for every person, whether child or adult, to sleep alone. Certainly in hot weather every one should have his own couch. No one could expect the baby to sleep well in bed with its father and mother, and one has only to notice the children tossing in a bed which is overheated by two or three persons to understand the need of plenty of bed space to keep cool in warm weather. No one should go to bed without a bath in hot weather. This is not hard to take under any circumstances. In the house with plumbing and a bath tub it will not consume more than fifteen minutes to

fill the tub and take a plunge. Where there is only a wash-bowl and pitcher and but a single room, a screen, which can be improvised with a piece of stout cord and a pair of sheets or a shawl or blanket, will form a bath-room, where the skin can be cleansed and cooled before going to bed.

All disagreeable or exciting news, or any exciting play, or anything calculated to stimulate mental activity should be avoided, if possible, in the evening. We read that “godliness with contentment is great gain,” and that “a contented mind is a continual feast,” and nothing tends to promote sleep more than cultivating repose of mind and body in daily life. Children should never be rudely awakened from sound sleep; neither should they be indulged to spend time listlessly in bed. An early retiring hour, a bed for each child in a cool place in hot weather, a clean skin and clean linen, freedom from insect irritation, and a light evening meal will tend to keep the children’s sleep record normal. Why should not man obey the invitation by going out into the coolness and freshness of the night and sleeping with all other animate nature? — Good Housekeeping.