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Wednesday 7 February 2018

Sleeping habits in the eighteenth century

Two different well-known personalities of the eighteenth century had some interesting views on
sleeping:

The statesman Benjamin Franklin once quipped "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." However the American did not practice what he preached and he habitually stayed up late reading scientific books. When bothered by insomnia he got out of bed and let the bed air out. Once the bed was cool, Franklin returned to it and fell asleep again.

Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Wilson, 1759

Franklin frequently switched beds sleeping on up to four beds every night. He had a theory that a warm bed saps a man's vitality so when one bed became too warm the statesman jumped into another.

Meanwhile John Wesley habitually rose every morning at 4am. In a sermon The Duty And Advantage of Early Rising, he stated that lying in bed was physically unhealthy. The evangelist claimed that "by soaking so long between warm sheets, the flesh is as it were par-boiled, and becomes soft and flabby. The nerves, in the meantime, are quite unstrung.".

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