Sleep as a Tonic | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1879

Sleep as a Tonic.

THE best possible thing for a man to do when he feels too weak to carry out anything is to go to bed and sleep as long as he can.

This is the only actual recuperation of brain force; because during sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood, which takes the place of those which have been consumed by previous labor, since the very act of thinking burns up solid particles, as every turn of the wheel or screw of the steamer is the result of consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace.

The supply of consumed brain substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the blood which were obtained from the food eaten previously, and the brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to itself those nutritive particles during the state of rest, of quiet and stillness of sleep.

Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they goad the brain and force it to a greater consumption of its substance, until it is so exhausted that there is not power enough left to take up a fresh supply.