SLEEP | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 3, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 22.

SLEEP.

Dr. D. P. Robbins says sleep is most important to health. During its hours of quiet rest, millions of microscopic cells are busy in the interior of the organism, repairing the waste which the day's work has caused. Dr. Richardson, of London, describes the labor of sleep in the following language:—

"During the period of natural sleep the most important changes of nutrition are in progress; the body is renovating, and, if young, is actually growing. If the body be properly covered, the animal heat is being conserved and laid up for expenditure during the waking hours that are to follow; the respiration is reduced, the inspirations being lessened in the proportions of six to seven; the action of the heart is reduced; the voluntary muscles, relieved of all fatigue, and relaxed, are undergoing repair of structure, and recruiting their excitability; and the voluntary nervous system, dead for the time to the external vibration, or, as the older men call it, 'stimulus' from without, is also undergoing rest and repair, so that, when it comes again into work, it may receive better the impressions it may have to gather up, and influence more effectively the muscles it may be called upon to animate, direct, control."