Vitality Supreme

CHAPTER XIX: Suggestions About Sleep Sleep is one of the first essentials in maintaining or in building vitality. There are differences of opinion as to how much sleep may be necessary to health, but that sufficient sleep is required if one wishes to maintain the maximum of energy no one can question. Sleep is far more necessary than food. One can fast for many days, or many weeks if necessary, and without any special disadvantage if he is well nourished before beginning the fast and has a satisfactory food supply after ifs conclusion, but no one can "fast" from sleep for more than a few days at a time without experiencing ill effects. One can scarcely endure an entire week of absolute sleeplessness. It has been found that dogs kept awake even though sufficiently fed, suffer more than when deprived of food and permitted to sleep. When kept awake continuously they die in four or five days. Man can endure the strain a little longer than the dogs, but five or six days usually marks the limit of human life under such conditions. In early English history condemned criminals were put to death by being deprived of sleep, and the same method has been employed in China. Enforced sleeplessness, in fact, has been used as a form of torture by the Chinese, being more feared than any other. The men subjected to this frightful ordeal always die raving maniacs. These facts illustrate only too well the imperative necessity for sleep. Unfortunately "late hours" prevail, especially in large cities. Manifestly, if complete lack of sleep is fatal, late hours and partial lack of sleep is at least devitalizing and detrimental to health. The late hours kept by large numbers of people in civilized countries undoubtedly contribute very largely to neurasthenia and allied diseases. Improvements in artificial lights have contributed largely toward the increase of the evil of late hours, injurious not only through the loss of sleep entailed, but also because of the eye-strain incidental to strong artificial lights and the drain on the nervous system. If civilized man would follow the example of primitive man and of many of the birds and animals in retiring to bed with the coming of darkness and arising with the appearance of daylight, this one change would revolutionize the health of the whole human race.