Sleeping With Your Feet Toward the Equator

1884

Dr. J. S. Wright, professor of operative and clinical surgery in the Long Island college hospital, does not think that health is promoted by sleeping with the feet to the equator. He says the subject has never been treated in medical lectures, and he never heard it discussed in any scientific body. He never knew of any hospital where attention was paid to the theory in the arrangement of the beds.

Dr. McCorkle, professor of matoria medica and therapeutics, also of the Long Island college hospital, says he believes the theory of placing the bed north and south is more believed in by the laity than by the medical profession; that he has never tried it himself nor seen it tried by anybody.

Dr. Merzbach, of the same hospital, does not believe in the theory. A venerable physician of New York says: "My opinion is that it is a piece of nonsense worthy of some superstitious old lady. I would rank it with fortune-telling and table-tipping. Some people believe in them. Some people derive benefit from having charms about their persons, and there is no particular harm in their wearing charms if they see fit. I have heard of a man who carried a horse chestnut in his pocket as a preventive of hemorrhoids. He declared that whenever he lost his horse chestnut the disease returned. Yet I never heard of any physician prescribing that mode of cure for hemorrhoids.

"There is no end to the cures that may be worked by imagination. Bulwer hits off this thought capitally when he makes Pisistratus Caxton say: 'A saffron bag worn at the pit of the stomach is a great cure. Oh, foolish boy, it is not the saffron bag, but the belief in the saffron bag. Apply belief to the center of the nerves and all will be well.' So I say that this bed theory is a sort of saffron bag. While I am of the opinion that it is nonsense, and old women's cackle and empiric drivel, I have no doubt people may honestly believe in it and bear testimony to its worth. It is easily tried; it does not cost any money. It will do about as much good as a dose of sweetened water, such as a doctor often gives to people who think they must have something when they don't need anything."

The above opinions will no doubt prove of interest to those people whose rooms are so arranged that they cannot sleep with their heads to the north.

—The Atchison Globe, Atchison, Kansas, Aug. 3, 1884.

Concerning Beds, Mattresses in Days of Old

1874

During all ages, from the earliest times, men have displayed their invention in designing beds which should gratify their natural love for comfort, for elegance, and for luxury. In the prehistoric times the dwellers in the caves most probably followed the suggestion given them by the animals which they drove out from their rocky dens, in this early stage of the "struggle for existence," and made their beds of leaves. From this condition to providing skins for the coverings of their couches, was a great advance, and with their increasing ability to dominate their surrounding conditions, and provide the materials for gratifying their natural as well as artificial wants, this step was but the first in a long course of invention and improvement applied to beds.

Among the Romans and the Greeks, as well as the other nations of antiquity, such an appliance as a mattress was unknown. They made their beds upon couches of wood, which were covered with skins, furs, woolen and other stuffs. Their luxury in beds consisted only in using more expensive coverings, replacing a sheep's skin by a tiger's or substituting for a rough woolen blanket one of finer texture, or a shawl of silk embroidered in gold and silver thread. These improvements, or those consisting in replacing the wooden bench which formed their support with one of bronze, or even of gold or silver, was really only a display of greater wealth, but could not be considered in these days an advance towards securing the advantages of a comfortable, luxurious, and healthy bed.

In the early period of modern history, beds were almost universally, in Europe, nothing but bundles of straw. As late in England as the times of Queen Elizabeth, when no carpets were used, and the floor was strewn with rushes, the beds were hardly anything better, and a wooden bench, or any rude framework which lifted the bed above the floor, was a luxury. Erasmus, in his letters, describes the social condition of the people during the reign of Henry VIII, and was disgusted at the state of the floors. The rushes, he says, were so seldom changed, and became so damp, that the feet were constantly kept wet, and thence colds and consumption were quite common.

In the dining-rooms, he speaks of the filth collected on the floor among the rushes; the bits of meat and bones thrown to the dogs, who fought around the guests' legs for them; the beer and wine emptied upon the floor; the slices of bread, used as plates for eating their meat on, and then thrown aside, altogether giving us no very high conception of the neatness and fine breeding of the time.

From Delaroche's fine picture of "The Death of Queen Elizabeth," an accurate idea can be gained of the beds of royalty at this period, and consequently those of the common people can be imagined. By a careful study of the times, and from all the contemporary evidence bearing upon this point, Delaroche was enabled to reproduce the scene with a truthful accuracy of detail. The queen is reposing upon a bed formed by spreading cloths upon the floor. She is covered with richly embroidered spreads of velvet, bordered with golden fringe. The moment chosen is when she is upbraiding the Countess of Nottingham for keeping back the ring Essex had sent to his royal mistress just before his execution. The queen herself is gorgeously attired, as was her constant custom, but the comparison between the brilliant coverings of the bed and its position, one which now would be considered as in the dirt, affords an admirable picture of the partial civilization of the times, with its splendor of display and its want of the simplest decencies of the present.

Mattresses were first made of straw or wool, then moss came to be used, and feathers, and finally curled hair. The trouble with all mattresses of these materials is, that they become by use matted and hard, and have to be remade. Besides, too, all of these materials have a greater or a less tendency to retain the bodily exhalations, and in all public places, such as hotels, hospitals, and other institutions where the beds are used in turn by a number of different persons, the danger of contagion, and the difficulty in any case of keeping the beds hygienically clean and pure, according to the demands of the present medical standard, is very great, if not impossible.

Half Pound Baby Gets Along Nicely

1920

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Mr. and Mrs. Louis Ouisett are proud of being the parents of the littlest baby in New York. She is Jeanne Ouisett, and when she and her twin brother, Louis, were born Feb. 24 she weighed just under half a pound. Louis was bigger, tipping the scale at three-quarters of a pound, but he lacked the vitality of his sister and died a few hours after birth.

At the Bellevue Hospital the doctor and nurses believe the baby will live.



N.Y. Beds Too Short to Fit Tallest Yank

Brooklyn Pal Finally Leads Him to a "Rigged-Up" Couch

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Being the tallest man of the A. E. F. is something to be proud of, but it has its disadvantages when one goes looking for a place to sleep in this city.

Robert Redington of Pittston, Pa., former sergeant major in the 311th Artillery band, 79th Division, who is 6 feet 7, made the discovery on a recent night.

He finally appealed to Secretary James F. Drum at the K. of C. employment hut in Longacre square, who took Redington to his home in Brooklyn and managed to rig up a bed so his feet didn't stick out over the footboard.