Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers SayAllen, Martha Meir
Science
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers Say
Allen, Martha Meir
Alcohol -- Physiological effect; Temperance
The practice of long deep breathing will often put persons to sleep when
all other devices fail. The lungs should be filled to their utmost
capacity, and then emptied with equal slowness, repeating the
respiration about ten times a minute, instead of eighteen or twenty, the
natural rate. Those who fall asleep upon first going to bed, and after a
few hours awake, and are unable to sleep again, may find relief by
getting out of bed, and rubbing the surface of the body with the dry
hand. Or walk about the room a few minutes, exposing the skin to the
air, go back to bed and try the deep breathing.
"The use of drugs for the purpose of inducing sleep should be
avoided as much as possible. Opium is especially harmful. Sleep
obtained by the use of opiates is not a substitute for natural
sleep. The condition is one of insensibility, but not of natural
refreshing recuperation. Three or four hours of natural sleep
will be more than equivalent to double that amount of sleep
obtained by the use of narcotics. When a person once becomes
dependent upon drugs of any kind for producing sleep, it is
almost impossible for him to dispense with them. It is often
dangerous to resort to their temporary use, on account of the
great tendency to the formation of the habit of continuous use.
The use of opiates for securing sleep is one of the most
prolific means by which the great army of opium-eaters is
annually recruited. Chloral, bromide of potash, whisky and other
drugs are to be condemned almost as strongly as opium."--DR.
KELLOGG.
Dr. Furer, of Heidelberg, Germany, in a paper before the International
Congress against alcohol, held in Basle, Switzerland, in Sept., 1895,
said:--
"The sleep from alcohol does not act as a mental tonic, but
leaves the mind weaker next day."
Some noble specimens of manhood have become wrecks through accepting the
advice to try "whisky night-caps." Edison recommends manual labor,
instead of going to rest, for aggravated insomnia. He says sleep will
soon come naturally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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