Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1874 — Importance of Wholesome Beds. [ARTICLE]

Importance of Wholesome Beds.

Sleep to the workingman is emphatically nature’s restorer, reinvigorating the physical system, which through much toil has become weary, and* keeping up the flow of life and spirits which are necessary to the performance of the arduous duties of firm life. A comfortable bed, as we are ail aware, conduces gfeatly to one’s rest. On this subject a recent writer says: Of the eight pounds which a man eats and drinks in a day, it is thought that no less than five pounds leave his body through the skin. And of these five pounds a considerable per cent, escapes during the night while he is in bed. The largest portion of this is water, but in addition there is much effete and poisonous matter. This, being in great part gaseous in form, permeates every part of the bed, mattress and blankets as well as -sheets, which soon became foul and meed purification. The mattress needs the renovation quite as much as the sheets. To allow the sheet to be used, without washing or changing, three or six months, would be regarded as bad housekeeping ; but I insist if a thin sheet can absorb enough of the excretions of the body to make it unfit for use in a few days, a thick mattress, which can absorb and retain a thousand times as much of these poisonous excretions, needs to be purified as often, certainly, as once in three months. A sheet can be washed. A mattress cannot be renovated in this way. Indeed, there is no way of cleansing a mattress but by steaming it or picking it to pieces, and thus, in fragments, exposing it to the rays of the sun. As these processes are scarcely' practicable with any of the ordinary mattresses, I am de. cidedly of the opinion that the good oldfashioned straw bed, which can every three months be changed for fresh straw, and the tick be washed, is the sweetest and healthiest of beds. If, in the wintry season, the porousness of the straw bed makes it a little uncomfortable, spread over it a comforter or two woolen blankets, which should be washed as often as every two weeks. With this arrangement, if you wash all the bed coverings as often as once in two weeks, you will have a delightful. healthy bed. Now, if you leave the bed to air, with open windows during the day, and not make it up for the night before evening, you will have added greatly* to the sweetness of your rest, and, in consequence, .to the tone of your health. I heartily wish the change could be everywhere introduced. Only those who have thus attended to this important matter can judge of the influence on the general health and spirits.— Maine Farmer.