I860.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



693 



are more idolaters, beside the covetous. 

 Sleep, not balmy sleep given to be " tired 

 nature's sweet restorer," but lazy sleep, mor- 

 bid sleep, is the snorer's god. He can sleep 

 all the better, and snore the louder, after 

 arriving at the perfection of his art, while 

 you are shaking him. We might all be 

 worshippers of this same morbid sleep were 

 we, nervously, so constituted as to be subject 

 to his chloroform influences. Like a still 

 more wiley demon, he defeats his own 

 powers by attempting to bring them over us 

 so rapidly as to startle us. 



But why inflict so long a desertation upon 



snoring, that few wil 



begin and fewer will 



finish it? My dear objector! If to write 

 on snoring had been my only aim, I should 

 have made a short matter of it. There were 

 correlative things which I wished to strike 

 at; besides, if you had suffered half what I 

 have from snorers, I think you would have 

 found it hard to suppress all spite, and all 

 desire to save others from similar durance. 

 But let me tell my story in • my own way, 

 and it will come to a close at some time. 



Having made a great fuss about snoring, 

 which I find to be the only way of gaining 

 attention from the go-aheads of these times, 

 I should now attempt to tell what it is, and 

 promise directions for its cure. To do this 

 more correctly, I confess I have consulted 

 medical books a little. By the jaw-cracking 

 terms used, I fear I have only increased 

 confusion in describing the parts concerned 

 in the operation. I hope, however, I have 

 quoted them correctly. As to snoring itself, 

 I can find nothing, except that it is "a sound 

 supposed to be made between the nostrils 

 and the palate, by persons in sleep." Of 

 the cure, the learned doctors say nothing, 

 I suppose wisely, because they know noth- 

 ing. Snoring, then, is a sound, and a hor- 

 ridly ugly one, produced by a relaxation and 

 mal-position of some Of the organs of respi- 

 ration. The muscles of the lower jaw re- 

 lax when the patient falls asleep, and if its 

 position be dependent, and no extraneous 

 support afforded, it falls by its own gravity, 

 the mouth, of course, opens, the root of the 

 tongue yields, giving passage to the breath 

 through the mouth, and making room for 

 all the flapping of the velum, and flirting 

 about, like a piece of whip-cord, of the pen- 

 dulum palati, described already, whilst the 

 nose is occasionally opened, like the valves 

 in the chimneys of a steam engine, to add 

 horror to the frightful belching. We may 



fret, or laugh at it, as the humor leads us, 

 but the poor patient suffers enough, I should 

 think, to make him try the very simple 

 remedy which I am about to recommend. 



It is this — Keep your mouth shut, when 

 you sleep, if you have to tie it up, and this 

 will save you from a painful, crust-like dry- 

 ness of all its parts, and that awful approach 

 to suffocation which you so often experience. 

 I might stop giving directions for the cure 

 just here, leaving to individual ingenuity, in 

 each case, to adapt the mouth-closer to the 

 shape of the head under operation. It 

 should be remembered, however, that the 

 chin and lips have many glands, which it is 

 not safe to irritate by bandages too 

 too rough. I would further 

 cap to fit the chin, made of netting or soft 

 cloth, and attached to the night-cap by 

 elastic strings, (or common tape might do,) 

 just back of the eyes, so as to pull upward 

 and not backward, with attachments, which 

 also be necessary, behind the ears, 

 form an apparatus which would 

 answer the purpose. In my own case, at 

 home, I use a very soft and long little pillow. 

 After shaking the feathers to one end of the 

 pillow, and adjusting the level of the chin 

 to that of the crown, to neutralize the weight 

 of the jaw, I place the pillow, with its 

 empty end uppermost, upon the common 



tight or 

 suggest, that a 



might 

 might 



pillow and at right angles to it, causing the 

 stuffed end to rest on the arm next the bed, 

 in the upper part of this latter I ensconce 

 the chin and go to sleep, fearless of opening 

 the mouth, and, of course, fearless of snor- 

 ing to hurt anybody. When abroad, I tuck 

 some part of the covering — the sheet, gene- 

 rally, — under the shoulder next the bed, 

 draw it over the shoulder uppermost, then 

 secure it on the pillow under the temple, 

 rest the chin upon it, and feel equally safe. 

 This treatment has cured my case. Some- 

 thing more stringent might be required for 

 the inveterate and long-continued. Dis- 

 eases and vices strengthen much by habit. 



Had this article been published in a 

 medical journal, none but the doctors would 

 have seen it, and I had no idea of indoc- 

 trinating them in the sublime mysteries of 

 snoring, when nobody afflicted with it would 

 send for them to cure it. No one hates 

 quackery more than I do, but where dis- 

 eases can be safely trusted to domestic treat- 

 ment, I have no objection. The doctors 

 are, many of them, fine fellows — but still 

 "they are necessary evils. When necessary, 



