Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 144, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1916 — Making the Home Comty [ARTICLE]

Making the Home Comty

How to Sleep Like a Post. A sufferer from insomnia retails a number of counsels he has received, of which the first comes from the poet M.Leconte, who says: *‘Open your windows wide. Lie with your head as low as possible and you will sleep like a post." Another well known man writes: "Accustom yourself to take an hour or two's.._rest in -a deck chair after every meal. Take down from your shelves some old fashioned novel of which you have an affectionate re membrance as one of the joys of your youth, and read it while you are in your desk chair. The more you are wearied by it the better you will sleep. The secret of a good night is not to tire yourself out in the evening, but to idle away the time, to get comfortably bored until the time comes for going to bed. The more your brain is dulled, the better night you will have. “An important point tho a difficult one, is to avoid any dread of insoin pia. Personally I derive benefit, tho it may just have the opposite effect on another person, from calculating the multiples of 2 or 3 as far as I can go; thus 2—4—8—16—32, etc. Or else I count elephants; one elephant and one elephant make two elephants, two elephants and one elephant make three elephants, etc. “Finally knock off your black cos fee, even your morning cup on rising, and take no meat in the evening. For lunch eat nothing but fruit, stew ed for preference, and for dinner a vegetable soup, vermicelli, mashed potatoes and one or two biscuits.

“If this does hot do the trick, as a last heroic remedy put a damp napkin round your head at night covered with a piece of oilskin and tied on with a bandage. Sleep should come in ten minutes. But I look .upon this device as calculating in the long run to impede the natural action of the organs of the body. Another of my fellow sufferers recommends magnetism, which he says has cured him after ten applications. Another writes: “No drug should be used except in the case of very obstinate insomnia, when it is necessary, at all costs to get three good nights. No other person should be in the room. The sound of their sleeping is irritating. Smoke very little in the evening and abstain from all stimu lant—tea’coffee, grog, etc. Don’t read in bed. If sleep refuses to come, get up for a few minutes and occupy yourself*with some triAing duties, such as arranging papers, folding up your clothes, washing your hands Don’t let business come into your head. Don’t mind a slight feeling of chill and get into bed again at the end of ten or twelve minutes. “If in spite of all this, sleep refuses to come, try reading. But don’t read anything lively or interesting. In my own case it is very rare that insom nia does not succumb to two or three pages of Plato’s ‘Phaedo.’”

An eminent doctor of Lyons says much the same thing. Another suggests: “Count slowly from 1 upward. It is very rare one gets up to 200 with out going off to sleep. It is on rec ord, however, that one victime gor up to 16,987, and then it was time for him to get up._ Health Notes. The eye itself needs daily care and an eye cup is as necessary as a tooth brush. Many believe in pure, coir water, but some oculists do not agree to this idea, and recommend that a weak solution of boracic acid be used. The peanut is a mine of «riches, containing more protein, or lean meat value, than any other nut known and a immense store of fat, so that as a food it is a rich treasure, but it should be recognized and used as a solid food and not as a between meal tidbit, fot' it is anything but a delicate or light, food. This however, may be said of all nuts, and one should avoid overloading the system with them, for by this is indigestion formed and undeserved reproach to nuts as food Investigations made in regard to weight, both over weight and underweight, show interesting results. The physician who has made this study finds that the mortality rate increases with the increase of weight—above the normal. But leanness seems far

more to be dreaded than slight overweight. Lean people are six times as likely as plump people to contract tuberculosis. Among 2,500 people who have been studied not one overweight lived to be eighty years old; two underweights, however, lived to the age of 90. A Stitch In Time. If you mean to save your sheets and pillow slips and towels, you must give them a glance'before they go Into the laundress’ hands. Often a stitch set then will mend a little break that washing would develop into a hole The hemstitching of a towel which has be gun. to break may be caught up in two minutes now. If you wait until the towel comes home you will find the hem hanging In a strip which will require an hour’s task if it is to be repaired properly. Add a sprig of mint to the water in which you boil your potatoes and an odd and delicious flavor will be im parted to them. A sprig of mint ad ded td your lemonade, makes it de llgbtful and refreshing.