Sleep

Preface

It is the aim and end of this Book to show that as a means of high health, good blood, and a strong mind to old and young, sick or well, each one should have a single bed in a large, clean, light room, so as to pass all the hours of sleep in a pure fresh air, and that those who fail in this, will in the end fail in health and strength of limb and brain, and will die while jet their days are not all told.

New- York, October 23,

SLEEP.

SLEEPING WITH THE OLD.

Ok a beautiful September morning in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, a note was found on the author's table in a handwriting which was immediately recognized as that of a wife and mother of high culture, in behalf of a young sister, whom she had hoped would have grown up as healthful, as beautiful, and as accomplished as herself; but the lovely blossom seemed to be, fading in its unfolding, and the communication was a history of the case, intended to give the physician an idea of its nature and its needs. 1*

" Baby Bell, as we all grew up to call her, might have been an exquisite model for a baby Hebe ; so rounded, so rosy, so full of vivacity and health ! As I recall her childish form now, after the lapse of years, I can imagine nothing more beautiful in mortal

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shape. Her fair head was covered with sunny curls which dropped upon white and dimpled shoulders. She was of the Saxon type, her eyes of the most limpid blue, ' roses were her cheeks, and a rose her mouth/ Until six years old, she retained all her health and beauty, when her system began slowly to undergo a change. Her limbs lost their roundness, her cheek its dainty bloom. Was it not strange ? She seemed well ; but as the next six years wore on, each succeeding day stole something of her vitality, which changed the once ruddy and healthful child into a puny, pallid, nervous girl. Yet she had no constitutional ailment ; no hereditary disease ever developed itself. She never had a serious illness, and yet she was always ailing. She was troubled with nervous headaches, so unnatural to a child, whose perfect organism should have made her unconscious of the possession of nerves.

THE FADING CHILD.* 7

"She was my little sister, my darling little sister. I saw her at intervals during the lapse of six or seven years, and was always troubled by the unagreeable changes which each succeeding year wrought in her person. Those who were in the habit of seeing her daily, laughed at my expressed fears that her health was declining ; they said : ' She was growing, that was all.' Growing ! Yes ! but so slowly, that at twelve years she was not taller than the generality of children at ten, and not so broad across the chest as an ordinary child at five; and her little puny arms, how slender they were; the skin on her temples was transparent. Growing ! Yes ! other children were -growing' and developing likewise. Chubby faces and limbs are characteristic of childhood. Slender and delicate forms in children are untrue to nature, therefore there must be a cause for them. The constant exercise and generous appetite of a child should secure to it well-developed mus cles and an abundance of pure blood. When, therefore, the venous fluid seems through the skin to be no more than mere lymph, and the limbs evince no muscle at all, there must be a cause, and ought to be a remedy. " What is it?' 7

Special inquiry elicited the fact, that at the close of the fifth year, this promising child became possessed with the idea that she must sleep with an aged relative, and in failing health. Her whim was gratified. Time passed imperceptibly. The practice had become a habit which parental indulgence had not the firmness to break up. All suggestions that the evident failing in health and vigor and comeliness in the once beautiful child, was the result of sleeping in the same bed with an old person, who was evidently now sinking into the grave with an incurable disease, or rather a complication of ails, were regarded with indifference, and the child pined and withered away like a flower without water.

BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA. 9

"Lord Clive, while a colonel in the British Army, commenced his career as founder of the British empire in India. Full of honors and wealth, he returned to England ; but being defeated in getting into Parliament, in seventeen hundred and fifty -five, sailed again under the King's command for India, the Company appointing him to the governorship of Port St. David. But the very day he stepped into the gubernatorial chair at Madras, the Bengal Nabob took Calcutta. Then came that chapter of unheard of cruelty, familiar to every child who has learned to read his storybooks. The tragedy of the Black Hole occurred in seventeen hundred and fifty-six. The dungeon was twenty feet square. The little garrison thought it all a joke when they were ordered to go in : but to refuse was to die, for Surajahul Dowlak's orders must be obeyed ; prolonged suffering was better than instant death ; they entered ! one hundred and thirty-six in all. The door was closed, the small aperture admitted neither light nor air. When they began to exchange breaths the startling truth burst upon them. The air already was almost putrid* they shrieked, they yelled in mortal agony ; they screamed for water, and then killed each other over the cup which was passed through the grating. While the poor prisoners were biting and squeezing each other's life away, gasping for air, for water, for any thing that would relieve them of their agony, the jailers laughed and danced in pure delight. Holmeil, the highest in rank, offered the jailer heavy bribes ; but no, the Nabob was sleeping, and no one dared to wake him. In the morning, when the debauch was slept away, he ordered the dungeon-door to be opened, and out staggered twenty-three swollen, distorted living corpses ! One hundred and twenty-three were piled up, a putrefying mass of men ; all shapes and forms were represented in the death-struggle. The English woman who survived was sent to the harem of the Prince of Moorshebadad. Holmeil was saved and tells the tale. The dead were burned on the spot, but the harrowing picture did not move in the least the granite disposition of the human tiger. The horrible deed reached Olive, and the celebrated battle of Plassey showed the inhuman Nabob that it was a foollhardy thing to trifle with the feelings of

DEADLY AIR. 11

Englishmen. The soldiers fought like bulldogs; revenge stimulated them, and the Nabob's army of sixty thousand strong was broken like a reed. Clive lost but twenty-two men."

At about four o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, in the latter part of August, eighteen hundred and sixty, the following distressing occurrence took place in Federal street, Allegheny City, Pennsylvania : ^

11 Alfred Bottles, William his brother, and James Vance, were engaged in digging a well in the rear of the beer-hall of Herman Hendal, corner of Federal street and Center alley, on a lot owned by John Chislett, Esq., of the Allegheny Cemetery, from whom Hendal had leased. The object was to drain a privy- vault, and the well was dug thirteen feet deep close to the vault. Alfred Bottles, after four o'clock, descended into the well by a ladder, and made a hole in the vault, six feet from the ground, to drain off the contents. When he thought the hole was through, he stooped to look, when the foul air in the vault came out, suffocated him, and he fell from the ladder to the bottom of the well, where the filth poured down upon him. Vance, seeing him fall, waited a few moments and followed him, but was also overcome by the foul gas, and fell to the bottom. William Bottles next went down to the assistance of the others, and shared the same fate. By this time there was a foot or more of liquid in the well, and those undermost, Alfred Bottles and Vance, were partially covered with it. At this juncture, John Taggart, gardener for Mr. Wilson, at Shousetown lane, who was in a store on Federal street receiving pay for some articles he had sold, heard of the accident and hastening to the spot, jumped into the well, to save, if possible, the lives of the three sufferers. Wm. Bottles had then been in the well some five minutes. Mr. Taggart was overcome, in like manner with the rest, by the gas, and fell over Wm. Bottles, forcing his head partially under the fluid in the well. " The bystanders were paralyzed, and nearly all were afraid to give any assistance. But a young German, named William Brown, about twenty-five years of age, fearless of the consequences, volunteered to go down. A rope

NATIONAL HOTEL DISEASE. 13

was fastened around his waist and with, anther in his hand, he was let down in the well, and fastening a rope around the body of Taggart, he was drawn up. Brown descended a second, third and fourth time, and thus the four bodies were brought to the surface. Alfred Bottles and James Yance were dead when taken out, and Taggart expired soon after being carried in a house adjacent. William Bottles was taken to his residence and recovered."

In the early part of the year eighteen hundred and fifty -seven, the inmates of the National Hotel in Washington City, the capital of the United States of America, were filled with consternation at the fact that several of their number were taken ill, in and about the same time. Reports were immediately circulated, that the symptoms were uniform and were those which ordinarily attend arsenical poison, to wit, severe griping pains, uncontrollable diarrhea, inward " burning" sensations, and the like. Persons were attacked under a great 2 variety of circumstances. Some were habitues of the Hotel ; others ate there, but slept elsewhere. Some neither ate nor slept there, but passed several hours of each day in the rooms on the ground-floor. Some were attacked who had slept there but a single night. A traveler ate a single dinner, and came near dying. Some persons died in a few days, others lingered for months and then died. Some lingered for years without recovering their wonted energy of mind and vigor of body. Some went to Europe in the hope of wearing the poison out of their systems, and returned the next year with but little of the desired improvement. Some of the first physicians in the country gave their convictions in the public presses, that there could be no remaining doubt that all was the result of some mineral poison, in some way introduced into the food. But two simple facts were testified to on an official investigation, and of their truth there was not the shadow of a doubt,

DEADLY EMANATIONS. 15

and could not be denied. Persons were attacked who never ate an atom or drank a drop on the premises. Second, not a single case occurred in any family living across the streets which bounded the Hotel, and where none of the members of which had visited the building. A third fact needed no proof, that persons, especially some of the ladies who had been living at the Hotel for weeks, and occupied rooms in it during the time, were not affected at all, and yet they came down to the common table day after day.

On official inquiry, it was ascertained by ocular demonstration, that a large sewer of the city opened into the cellar of the Hotel, and also, that the privies under the same roof were in an ill condition, one of them being so full, that when a person stepped on the floor of it, the matter beneath spirted up between the joinings of the boards.

During the summer of eighteen hundred and sixty, a gentleman was traveling in

Italy. As lie left Kome, lie was warned of tlie danger of sleeping at Baccano. He was told to travel all night rather tlian stop at that place, as a malignant fever prevailed there.

He arrived there about bed-time. The air was balmy, and the accommodations inviting. He concluded to stop for the night. Those whose interests would be promoted by his doing so, told him there was no danger.

He rose in the morning and proceeded on his journey. Some days after he had reached Florence the fever developed itself, and he was soon in his grave.

Last summer, Signor Ardisson, now of Baltimore, an exiled Eoman patriot of high culture, while on a visit to his friend, Kobert Earle, Esq., who dispenses the freest hospitalities to the travelled and the cultivated, at the beautiful Chateaux Elm Hurst, on the banks of the Hudson, almost in sight of classic Sunnyside and Idlewild, informed the author, on inquiries made, that always, when hunting in the Pontine marshes, it was well understood by himself and

GEOTTA DEL CAKE. 17

companions, that it was necessary to avoid hunger during their excursions, and also to keep up a vigorous circulation, either by active exercise, or mental hilarity, such as by singing, shouting, and slapping one another on the shoulders. On one occasion, when there was a failure of these precautions, it was followed in his own person by a dangerous illness of several weeks' duration.

In the celebrated Grotta Del Cane, there is an apartment where a man may walk with impunity, and yet his dog following him will fall down dead, and if the master lies on the floor, he too will die, showing the existence of a poisonous air near the floor.

The argument of this book is founded on the narrations which have been given. Volumes of similar ones, well authenticated, might be easily collected, going to show that breathing an impure air for various durations, will occasion states of ill-health of all grades, from an almost imperceptible decline, to symptoms 2* which, have the malignity of the most virulent and speedily fatal poisons.

It needs no caution, generally, to keep persons from breathing an atmosphere which will produce certain death in a few hours or minutes even. But the most earnest and irresistible arguments have failed thus far to impress upon the public mind the conviction of the certainly destructive influences upon human health which follow from too many persons sleeping in the same room, of several persons sleeping in the same bed, or of a single person sleeping habitually in a small apartment.

The plan of this book is to show the destructive influence on health and life which bad air exercises; to state a variety of the causes of deterioration, among which the most rapid in their effects are emanations from the human body, and the expirations from the lungs; and therefore, as we spend a third of our existence in sleep, during which, in con-

PURE SLEEPING- ROOMS. 19

sequence of its passive condition, the corporeal system is greatly more liable to *jhe influence of the causes of disease, it is of the utmost consequence that every practical and rational means for securing a pure air for the chamber should be employed, the most important of these being large rooms and single beds.

It is not only unwise, it is unnatural and degenerative, for one person to pass the night habitually in the same bed or room with another, whatever may be the age, sex, or relationship of the parties. Unwise, because it impairs the general health and undermines the constitution, by reason of the fact, that the atmosphere of any ordinary chamber occupied by more than one sleeper, is speedily vitiated, and that in this vitiated condition, it is breathed over and over again for the space of the eight hours usually passed in sleep, amounting, in the aggregate, to one third of a man's entire existence. Unnatural, because it is contrary to our instincts; and it is lowering, because it diminishes that mutual consideration and respect which, ought to prevail in social life. A person feels elevated in proportion to the deference received from another, and there springs up a self-restraint, a consciousness of personal dignity, which has an exalting effect on the whole physical, moral, and social nature of man ; but the habitual occupation of the same chamber must largely detract from these in a variety of ways.

Without the argument of analogies, that the most spiteful, the vilest, and the filthiest of the animal kingdom — wolves, hogs, and vermin — huddle together, the physical aspects of the case will be considered in their bearings on human health. It is not denied that two persons have slept together in the same bed for half a century, and have lived in health to a good old age; this only proves how long some may live in spite of a single bad habit. Persons have lived quite as long in the habit-

INTENT OF THE BOOK. 21

ual indulgence in low, vicious, degrading, and drunken practices. It will be found, however, that in these cases there were counteracting causes in steady operation, such as open chambers, houses with a thousand cracks and crannies, and frequently during the time, the earth a pillow, a canopy the sky, with the additional fact that a large portion of every day was habitually spent in wholesome activities in the open air. To these considerations may be added the high advantage of a good constitution to begin with, and the necessity of a plain and primitive mode of life. Exceptional cases are not to be considered in a general argument. It is proposed to show that the tendencies of certain .social habits are uniformly pernicious, and that prejudicial results will follow as certainly as that water will fall over a precipice, if physical obstacles are not presented, such as that of its being frozen at the instant, diverted from its course, or caught in the beginning of its descent.

The general argument against sleeping with others, is found in the undeniable fact, that when several persons sleep in the same apartment, the fewer conveniences are there for personal cleanliness, which is at the very foundation of bodily health, of moral purity, and mental elevation.

There is another argument of an exceedingly wide range, and yet a mind of very limited culture can not fail to feel its force. As men improve in their condition, there is a strong desire for greater domestic conveniences and comforts; the very first of these is "more room; 7 ' and eventually, instead of several members of a family sleeping in the same bed, each child, as it grows up, has a separate apartment, and a rich man's dwelling has more than one room to each member of his household.

In former times, it was oftener the case than at present, that the married children would remain with their parents as a matter of economy, for several years ; but now it is usually a

CBOWDED LIVING. 23

settled thing to secure a "home of their own" before the marriage ceremony; "going to housekeeping," is an event second only to the marriage itself, and is one of the surest indications of thrift.

On the other hand, as families herd together in the same building, there are found those brutal debasements which have made famous the "tenement-houses" of New- York, where as many as one hundred and twenty distinct families lived under the same roof, and where there were thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three houses which averaged nearly six families each, and thus three fourths of the population of the metropolis of the United States of North- America, lived in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, with the result of its being the sickliest of all the large cities of the civilized world; while Philadelphia, but eighty-six miles away, with hotter summers and sometimes colder winters, without that proximity to the sea, which is so fruitful of sanitary blessings, is one of the healthiest cities in the Union. But Philadelphia has a house to every six persons, while New- York has but one to every thirteen. Such facts as these prove, on a large scale, that the more house-room a community has, the more healthful will that community be.

Another great fact is, that there are three times the number of deaths, in proportion to the population, in those parts of the city where the poorest, and consequently the most persons live together in the same house, as compared with the mortality where nearly every family lives in a dwelling of its own. For example, in, the First Ward of the city of New- York, where almost all are poor, one person died out of every twenty-two, while in the Fifteenth Ward, where the inhabitants live mostly to themselves, in large, roomy buildings, only one died out of every seventy!

Further, in the sixteenth century, when the great majority of mankind lived in huts and

CONVULSIONS OF CHILDREN. 25

hovels, whole families eating, sleeping, and working in the same apartment, the average of human life was five years, according to the estimate of Marc d'Espine and others ; but in the former half of the nineteenth century, that is, from eighteen hundred to eighteen hundred and forty, it had increased to forty-one years.

Nothing, perhaps, more accurately measures the thrift of any community than the greater number and size of its buildings, and the allowable inference is, that the more houses there are, in inverse proportion to the number of people, the further they sleep from one another, the larger the number of persons who tave rooms to themselves, and the more capacious are their chambers.

The convulsions or "fits" of children usually occur at night, while sleeping ; these, in most cases, arise from over-eating or breathing an impure air. Fifteen hundred and ninety-nine children under two years of age died in New- York City during eighteen hundred and fifty- 3 five, from this malady alone* While bad air causes these convulsions, immediate introduction to a pure atmosphere gives instantaneousand efficient relief.

The broad fact can not then be denied, that, as a general rule, and in the sense in question, the further people sleep apart, the more they occupy separate rooms, the greater are their chances of life. A more critical examination into the nature of things will show, in a most conclusive manner, the reason of such results.

Dr. Arnott reports that a canary hung up in a bed surrounded with closely-drawn curtains, and in which two persons slept, was found dead in the morning. This was because that, aftei the sleepers had breathed the air, there was not life enough left in it, not oxygen enough to feed a bird, and it perished. This shows in a general way, that when the breath comes out of the mouth, there is no substance in it, no nutriment, no life, and that we can no more live upon it than we could live upon food

CAPACITY OF THE LUNGS. 27

after all its nourishment had been extracted from it, and it had become as immtrient as saw-dust, or as the driest husks of the field. Experimenters have ascertained that a breath of air is so wholly deprived of its substance, its life, while in the lungs, that if re-breathed without any admixture of the common air, it would cause death in a minute or two*

The lungs of an ordinary man hold some ten pints of air ; but as they are never entirely emptied in life, they take in about six pints, or one gallon at a full breath.

In the breathing of repose, as in ordinary occupations^ about one pint, or forty cubic inches, is taken in at a breath. A person breathes about eighteen times a minute during sleep, or two and a quarter hogsheads in one hour; or eighteen hogsheads during the eight hours which are usually given to sleep, or two hundred cubic feet ; that is, in eight hours, every particle of nutriment would be abstracted from a room containing that amount of air. To make it more tangible, if a person were put to sleep in a room six feet high, eight feet long, and a little over four feet broad, and no air was allowed to come in from without, all the life of the air would be consumed, and he would die at the expiration of the eighth hour, even if each breath given out could be kept to itself. But this would not be the case, for the very first breath of the first minute would, on passing out of the mouth, mingle with the air of the room, and taint and corrupt it, so that in reality, the first breath of air taken would be the only one that was pure, each succeeding one would be less and less so, and long before the eight hours had expired, the whole mass, although not entirely vitiated, would be so to such an extent that it could not possibly sustain life. All have observed the disagreeableness of the air of ah ordinary-sized room, in which one or more persons have slept all night, when first entering it from a morning walk ; and this, too, when the

SIZE OF SLEEPING ROOMS. 29

various crevices about the doors and windows, and an open fire-place, allowed some fresh air to come in, and some of the foul air to escape. With this view of the case, physiologists advise that each person should sleep in a room equal to twelve feet square and eight or more feet high. The floor-surface of a room is mea* sured by the length and breadth multiplied to* gether. But ordinary chambers do not equal twelve by twelve ; do not measure a hundred and forty-four square feet. Not one in a thousand hotel-chambers is as large ; very few of the "state-rooms," so called, of ships and steamers, measure over seven feet long, seven feet high, and four broad, giving only two hundred and forty -five feet for two persons, which is barely enough to save one from inevitable death, if there were no crevices to admit the fresh air.

Since, therefore, each out-breathing vitiates the whole body of air in a close chamber, as a drop of ink will discolor a glass of water, it 3* should have a thorough, ventilation ; that is, a current of air should be passing through the room from without up through the open fireplace and chimney, carrying before it the bad air, leaving a fresher and a purer in its place.

But very few chambers in this country measure twelve feet square, and consequently are not large enough for one person, let alone two ; and in proportion as the room is too small, in such proportion are the lungs and body and blood deprived of their essential food, as essential to life as water is to a fish ; and in such proportion are sown the seeds of disease and premature death.

All know that a fish can not live an hour out of its natural element, water ; nor can man live an hour out of his natural element, air, nor a quarter of an hour, and to both a fresh supply of these must come in as steadily as used, or harm will follow as inevitably as universal darkness would envelop the earth, if the sun were blotted from existence.

SIMOONS OF AFRICA. 31

To show how a little taint of the atmosphere with a substance not natural to it will materially influence the animal economy, it is sufficient to state a fact of repeated observation, that a man who sleeps near a poppy-field with the wind blowing steadily towards him from the field, will die before the morning. Intelligent readers have often perused descriptions of the fatal effects of the dreadful Simoons which sweep over the African desert, leaving whole caravans of beasts and men dead from the instant contact with their scalding breath. Similar winds are also known in India. At a late meeting of the Meteorological Society of London, Dr. Cook remarked that there are certain days in which, however hard and violent the wind may blow, little or no dust accompanies it, while at other times every little puff of air or current of wind raises up and carries with it clouds of dust, and at these times the individual particles of sand appear to be in such an electrified condition, that they are even ready to repel each, other, and are consequently dis* turbed from their position and carried up into the air with the slightest current. To so great an extent does this sometimes exist, that the atmosphere is positively filled with dust, and when accompanied by a strong wind, nothing is visible at a few yards, and the sun at noonday is obscured. This condition of the atmosphere is evidently accumulative ; it increases by degrees till the climax is reached, when, after a certain time, usually about twenty-four hours, the atmosphere is cleared, equanimity is restored. Dust-columns appear under a similar condition of electrical disturbance or intensity. On calm, quiet days, when hardly a breath oi air is stirring, and the sun pours down his heating rays with full force, little circular eddies are seen to rise in the atmosphere near the surface of the ground. These increase in force and diameter, till a column is formed of great hight and diameter, which usually remains stationary for some time, and then sweeps away