Good Health | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 17, 1879

Good Health.

Let Children Sleep.

THE instinct of children against early and especially sudden, rising is well founded; and it is pleasant to have the learned faculty confirm a long and growing conviction that it is not a sin to lie in bed till the second bell rings. It is the experience of the majority of people that the most delicious moments of the whole day are those when they ought to get up, and do not.

Hereafter let them linger in this delightful borderland with a quiet conscience. Nature is about to be vindicated by the scientists. We have been now for several thousand years going to the ant and getting away from the sluggard to that degree that we have developed a very nervous condition. To say nothing of being defrauded of our rights, and of the legitimate and healthy luxury of sleeping long and waking up slowly, as plants do, no doubt many of the nervous diseases that are attributed to stock gambling, tobacco and unrequited love are due to the want of sufficient sleep, from childhood up.

It is not an idle fancy that we moderns do not sleep enough. It is, perhaps, right to shoot soldiers, who are hired for that purpose, for sleeping at their posts. It disciplines them; but it might be better to relieve guard oftener and send them to bed. Yet civilians generally ought to be lectured for sleeping too little. All the passages in school-books about early rising should be stricken out, and there should be verses promising a moderate competence as the reward of sleeping enough and coming out of sleep by degrees. In old times, perhaps, it did not matter so much, when the world was less busy, and there was less strain upon the faculties during the waking hours. But every one can see now that the world is red hot with money-getting and vast enterprises, and politics, and ritualism, and all sorts of rights, patent and some that are not so patent, and a feverish literature; and, in order to bear the wear and carry the load of it, a man needs to sleep more hours than he did when he only rose to eat and drink, and hunt the wild boar, and slay a few of his neighbors before an early dinner.

But we do not sleep as much as the former generations did, who had less to do. We are becoming more and more wakeful, so that we cannot sleep soundly in the season we give to rest. It is a nervous wakefulness, however, and not the full vigor of all the powers which should result from proper rest of the system. No one can be at his best in any hour unless he has given as many hours to solid sleep as his system requires. The demands of business and the exactions of society keep most of us out of bed unmercifully, and in time we get jadedly used to the unnatural life, and take credit to ourselves that we can do with the fewest hours of sleep. It is a great mistake. There have been great men who were able to accomplish a great amount of work with little sleep; but we may be sure that, if we want to be great men, or, what is more important in this day, great women, we shall reach the goal soonest by being good sleepers. That was an honorable epitaph on the Dutchman's tombstone: "He vas a gut sleeper." It will not be said of many of this nervous excited generation.

It is well, however, to plead for children. Let it be understood that it is no merit in a child to pop out of bed instantly upon the stroke of the bell, like a surprised and obfuscated jack-in-the-box. And give everybody time to wake up decently and in order. And let all the people say, Blessed is the medical man who preaches the gospel of morning "catnaps." —C. D. Warner, in Independent.