p. 23 | Want of Sleep

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1878

Want of Sleep.

THE statistics of lunatic asylums show that want of sleep is the most frequent and immediate cause of insanity. As you look over the history of the inmates, and note the peculiar trials which have shattered their poor heads or hearts, you see that nothing has happened to them save what is common in the varied experiences of this life. Many a one has passed under the same rod, or a heavier one, and come out unharmed, even steadier and stronger for the chastisement. But these sad subjects, from bad habits or bad inheritance, seem to possess some peculiarity of nervous irritability; so when sleep, like a loving mother, would soothe and save them, she cannot. No doubt many might have been saved by judicious care at the right time. Needful work is an excellent solace for earthly sorrow. Hence we note that those burdened by labor and care bear grief best; not that their sensibilities are less acute, not from lack of enduring love, but because weary muscles lead to sleep, nature's balmy bath, which soothes aching hearts as well as bodily pain. As the head which aches with thinking can only be cured by sleep, so the heart which thrills with agony needs to be soothed in the same way.

—Herald of Health.