Читать книгу The psychology of sleep онлайн

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Sleep, O gentle Sleep,

Nature’s soft nurse—

Shakespeare.

We should not think that, because we are ill, it is natural that we should not sleep. The invalid needs more and better sleep than the robust person—and the invalid can have it.

It is true that, as more and better sleep comes, the invalid will cease to be an invalid—at least that is the beginning of the end of invalidism. For Nature provides sleep as the “balm of hurt minds”—a cure for body or mind that needs restoring.

In the case of severe illness the physician in charge feels relieved when he learns that his patient is sleeping well. The professional idea of sleep is that nutrition goes on most perfectly during sleeping hours; that is, that Nature repairs all the waste that results from the use of brain and muscle during our waking hours. The more prolonged and undisturbed the sleep is, the more opportunity Nature has to make good the extra demands made upon the system by disease. It opens the way for the “Vis Medicatrix Naturæ”—the healing power of Life.