Carol wrote:
"If you are asleep, it hardly matters what position you are in."

Reply:
Huh?  Of course it does.  If you are the one assigned to keep watch (over
no matter what) you sit up to try to prevent yourself from drifting off as
easily or deeply.  Additionally, if you are sitting up, as apposed to fetal
position under a nice warm blanket, it is only logical that you would be
quicker to react to a situation.  And, don't say they are just supposed to
stay awake...life isn't that black and white. Further, if you had ever had
chest congestion...the severe kind such as acute asthma, bronchitis, TB or,
as my grandmother had, congestive heart failure, you would know that you
physically HAVE to sleep propped up.  It is actually uncomfortable, and at
times, impossible to lay down on either one's back or front and sides.  We
have had responses on list to this still being practiced just out of common
sense and under Dr recommendation.

Since they didn't even know TB was contagious in the early 19th century (&
other lung illnesses), and once infected  sleeping propped up relieved the
symptoms, it is only logical that they would have made a connection between
sleeping propped up and eradicating the disease.  The next logical step
would have to sleep propped up to prevent the illness altogether.  By
today's knowledge this is ridiculous, but with out the knowledge of what
causes or cures the disease, the only information one has to work with is
what makes it better - sleeping propped up.  Well, if worked after
infection, will it work to prevent?  It is a logical theory. This same
logic is how we got vaccines:  If it works after, will it work before?

Then there is the documentation issue.  If we relied solely on written
documentation, most of history would be deemed unimportant along with
entire sections of the population.  In fact, I think this has been going on
for centuries.  What horrifies me is that you are furthering this viewpoint
to students.  It is the 21st. century, already. Obviously, no one should
believe everything they see/hear.  But one should not dismiss everything
that doesn't have written documentation, either.  Henry the VIII may have
picked his nose.  Just because no one wrote it down doesn't make less true.
Encouraging open mindedness should be one of the utmost goals of any
educator.

Lori Allen
Graduate Student, History and Museum Studies
University of Missouri - St. Louis

"Well behaved women rarely make history."
                                  - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Historian

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