Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    519/896 (page 55)
    appearance of fair bodily health may be maintained for some time, and, although the student does not feel well, friends and relatives may be kept in ignorance that anything is wrong. The first really important symptom is sleeplessness; when this sets in there is cause for alarm. Work and want of sleep is burning the candle at both ends. Loss of sleep is brought about thus : — when the brain is being actively exercised there is an increase of blood in its vessels—this is spoken of as functional hyperemia. If we continue the exercise of the brain powers too long there is a tendency for the blood to remain in too great quantity, from the cells becoming exhausted and not being able to control the vessels. In sleep the amount of blood is diminished, and it cannot be procured if this functional hyperemia persists. In the absence of sleep the cells cannot recover themselves, and their activity becomes impaired. Headache, loss of appetite, and general listlessness follow; then changes in the character of the blood, and the trains of symptoms so ably described by Dr Clouston. As soon as a child or young person develops con- tinuous headache, work should be discontinued or much lessened. No time is left us to discuss the influences bearing on the establishment and maintenance of brain health over which the individual has control. In point of fact, this ground has been traversed by former lecturers, more especially in the addresses given by Professor Annandale to young men, and by Dr Angus Macdonald and Dr Halliday Croom to women. These gentlemen laid before their audiences certain pertinent facts, and it would be a mere work of supererogation for me to attempt to repeat what they said, even were it possible to do so to a mixed audience. As these lectures have not been printed, I would urge on the committee the propriety of requesting these gentlemen to repeat these lectures year by year, for such notes of warning cannot be sounded too often. Were this lecture to be extended it could only be in the direction of the enunciation of a series of moral platitudes incul- cating temperance, which would be insulting to your intelligence to submit to you. Every man knows that it is wrong to indulge