PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 339 



paratively bloodless condition ; * a hot head and throbbing temples 

 are unfavorable to repose, and it has been suggested that insomnia 

 might be counteracted by a hot foot-bath, chafing the arms and legs, 

 or any similar operation that would divert the blood from the head 

 toward the extremities, and thus tend to diminish the activity of the 

 cerebral circulation. Listening to distant music or the ripple of a 

 river-current has also a wonderful hypnotic effect, the repetition of 

 monotonous sounds, or, indeed, of any sensorial impression, seems 

 more favorable to repose than their entire absence. The philosopher 

 Kant assures us that he could obtain sleep in a paroxysm of gout by 

 resolutely fixing his attention on some abstruse ethical or mathemati- 

 cal problem, but remarks that the success of that method depends 

 upon the laboriousness of the mental process ; the mind, as it were, 

 takes refuge in sleep as the alternative of drudging at a wearisome 

 task. Robert Burton, too, gives a number of similar recipes, besides 

 a list of wondrous medicinal compounds to be swallowed or inhaled 

 ad horam som?ii, but in ordinary cases it is better to try the effects of 

 out-door exercise, before resorting to dormo use-fat, f theological text- 

 books, or other desperate remedies. 



Being naturally a sound and long sleeper has been ranked among 

 the surest prognostics of a long life, and sleep after a wasting disease 

 as the most certain symptom of recovery. Most brain-workers are 

 subject to occasional fits of insomnia, but the faculty of sustaining 

 health and vigor upon a very small allowance of sleep is generally a 

 concomitant of mental inferiority, or at least inactivity. The most 

 intelligent animals, dogs and monkeys, sleep the longest ; stupid brutes 

 merely stretch their legs, their inert brain requires no rest ; a cow 

 never sleeps in the proper sense of the word. Mirabeau, Goethe, and 

 James Quin often slumbered for twelve or fourteen hours successively, 

 while Leopold I, of Austria, and Charles IV, of Spain, the heartless 

 and brainless bigots, could content themselves with five hours of sleep 

 out of the twenty-four, and their prototype, the Emperor Justinian, 

 often even with one. (Gibbon's "Rome," vol. vii, p. 406.) 



Heinrich Heine wonders why Jehovah did not square his account 

 with our wicked forefathers by punishing them in their sleep, instead 

 of compromising their innocent progeny. Dietetic sins often avenge 

 themselves in that way ; blutwurst, sauerkraut, or short-cakes with 



* Dr. Caldwell records a case of a woman at MontpelHer, who " had lost part of her 

 skull (from disease), the brain and part of its membranes lying bare. When she was in 

 a deep and sound sleep, the brain lay in the skull almost motionless ; when she was 

 dreaming, it became elevated ; and, when she awoke, it became suffused with blood and 

 seemed inclined to rise through the cranial aperture." ("Psychological Journal," vol. r, 

 P- ^4.) 



f " Anoint the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with ear-wax of 

 a dog, swine's gall, oil of nunanhar, henbane," etc. (" Correctors of Accidents to procure 

 Sleep," " Anatomy of Melancholy," p. 414.) 



