17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, September 9, 1912: July, I mean Sept. 9. Don’t know what to write for today. So good night and sweet dreams.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Seems odd that Grandma first wrote July—she must have already been half asleep when she wrote this.
Maybe Grandma’s mind was “benumbed” by all of her schoolwork.
According to a hundred-year-old book called Personal Hygiene and Physical Training for Women:
The sleepy feeling is caused by fatigue due to the circulation in the blood of toxins resulting from tissue waste, which benumb the brain-cells; while the feeling of freshness and bien-etre with which one awakens in the morning is due to the elimination of the fatigue products from the blood.
The medical authorities of today are pretty well agreed that eight hours of sleep is the minimum required for the maintenance of health, and all concede that the brainworker requires more sleep than the manual laborer.