ody and all the faculties of the mind could
be kept steadily employed, and in healthful proportion, it is obvious
that a person could not be sick. Or, if one of these only should be
deranged, and we should fall sick, as the consequence, what else, pray
tell me, is needed, but to effect a speedy return of the faltering
function or part to its proper post and duty?

But sleep, more than all things else, whenever the usual hour has
actually arrived, has the effect to facilitate a cure. We all know how
wakeful some maniacs are, and how hurried and deranged all the movements
of the muscular and nervous systems are apt to become, no less than
those of the brain itself. And we all know, too, how much good it does
such persons to be able to obtain good, sound, substantial, quiet sleep.
It acts like a charm, and does more than charms can do, or mere
medicine.

Half the formality of having watchers by night in the sick room, does
more harm than good. It were better, in many instances, to extinguish
all the lights, except at certain set times and on particular occasions,
and let the patient sleep. And yet I have as exalted an estimate of the
importance of careful nursing as any other individual.

For example of my meaning, in a case of seeming contradiction, I may say
that I have taken all the needful care of a young man who was very sick,
for more than thirty successive nights with the exception of two, and
yet maintained my health, which, as you already know, was never very
firm. And I have known those who could do this for three months. But
they extinguish or hide their light, and acquire a habit of waking at
certain times, so as never to neglect the wants of the patient.

So true is it that sleep is the grand restorer as well as the great
curer of disease, that its salutary influence in the case of various
infantile complaints, has long been known and regarded. And one reason
why infants should neither be nursed nor fed in the night, as many
physiologists maintain, is, that it breaks in upon the soundness of the
sleep, as experience has most abundantly proved. Sleep, in short, if not
a "matchless" sanative, is at least a universal one.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

CURE BY DEEP BREATHING.

A young man, fifteen or sixteen years of age, who was in the habit of
suffering from protracted colds, nearly the whole winter, till they
seemed to terminate almost in consumption in the spring, came under my
care about March 1st, 1854, a