The Art of Lying Down (13 page)

Steamed from below: recumbent sauna

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, rest therapy became a popular way to treat those with weak nerves (today’s buzzword:
neurasthenia
), hysteria, and general physical fatigue. “To provide the nervous system with the rest desirable for its recovery, we must eliminate to the greatest extent possible all sensory stimulation, efforts of the will, and arduous thought processes,” wrote Leopold Löwenfeld (1847–1924), a psychologist who practiced in New York before returning to Munich, where his treatments included hypnosis. With many patients, he combined rest with the Mitchell-Playfair milk cure, a treatment named for the American Silas Weir Mitchell, who had developed it, and the English doctor William S. Playfair, who promoted it. In the most serious cases, patients had to spend six to eight weeks in bed. At the beginning of the rest period, even sitting up was prohibited, and patients were fed large amounts of milk or, later, soup or malt extract, along with a glass of champagne or red wine.

Thomas Mann soon immortalized sanatoriums and the rest cure society that took shape there by chronicling Hans Castorp’s adventures in
The Magic
Mountain
. Castorp lies on an “excellent chair” on his balcony, where he can make “a proper bundle, a sort of mummy” out of himself and look forward to many satisfying hours. On the magic mountain, the horizontal condition of lying down becomes a form of being itself: “We have to lie—nothing but lie … Settembrini says we live horizontally—he calls us horizontallers; that’s one of his rotten jokes.” In his
Studies in Hysteria
, Sigmund Freud describes how after initial reluctance, he grew accustomed to “combining cathartic psychotherapy with a rest-cure which can, if need be, be extended into a complete treatment of feeding-up on Weir Mitchell lines.” After all, he reasons, “This gives me the advantage of being able on the one hand to avoid the very disturbing introduction of new physical impressions during a psychotherapy, and on the other hand to remove the boredom of a rest-cure, in which the patients not infrequently fall into the habit of harmful day-dreaming.”

Horizontal healing: rest cure according to Friedrich E. Bilz

A form of rest cure in which patients retreat for a period into natural caves or abandoned mines continues to enjoy adherents today. The microclimate in underground shafts offers very damp, nearly dust-free air that may also be enriched with salt or radon. Spending time in such an environment can be helpful for people with asthma or other respiratory problems. And sanatoriums that provide rest cures to combat the suddenly ubiquitous problem of burnout are experiencing a boom.

To calm the nerves of sufferers, doctors once not only applied electricity directly to their bodies but sometimes set entire beds into motion. Interestingly, the vibrating or shaking bed (the second term is surely more apt) designed by Max Herz around 1900 was meant to mimic the rocking of a moving train, which had been shown to help relieve sleep disorders, general nervousness, and hearing difficulties caused by sclerosis of the middle ear. A flexible wooden board attached to a heavy base, with the help of an adjustable centrifuge device, could “be caused to vibrate like the taut string of a violin.” The approach here draws on the tradition of the
fauteuil trépidant
, or vibration chair, that the noted neurologist
Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) successfully used to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease.

Never took off: mechanical massage therapy

Another variation was a seat designed to pound on the patient’s back, intended for use in cases of chronic bronchitis (because it triggered an intense urge to cough) as well as in “rheumatic and infectious muscular processes.” Hands-on treatments like these were classified under the heading “Mechanotherapy.”

The sensation of rocking and swinging seems to make us happy. Children cannot get enough of it. And once the cradle came to be, it served as the first bed for generations of humankind. Regardless of how it was set in motion—with curved rockers, a semicircular base, or a hanging mechanism—a cradle’s movement was similar to what the child experienced both in the womb and when carried by its mother and suggested closeness and comfort. A folk belief held that beech-wood was most suited for making cradles because it could drive away evil spirits. Some old cradles also sported pentagrams or the letters
IHS
, the symbol of Christ, for added protection. In times of high infant mortality, such precautions surely seemed wise.

If we believe Tacitus, the ancient Germanic peoples sometimes hoisted their elderly into large cradles hung from trees in order to rock them into the great beyond. No precise description of these remarkable beds exists, but perhaps they resembled
the familiar hammock. Cradles for adults are hard to find today, but those looking to relive the sensations of childhood and perhaps even the time before birth can turn to rocking chairs and porch swings.

Caribbean hammock

During his first visit to the islands known today as the Bahamas, Christopher Columbus encountered hammocks that floated above the ground in the huts of the inhabitants. Because they were easy to fold up and transport yet offered protection from rats and snakes, they quickly became standard equipment for Spanish sailors and, later, soldiers. After that, it was only natural that they would catch on throughout the world. But a hammock is not nearly as comfortable as a reclining chair, and it limits its occupant’s movements far more than sitting in a chair. Also, getting
the amount of tension right when you hang it up is not always easy. Lying in a hammock can feel like being tied up, and if you roll over onto your side, you can end up falling out.

The position of a hammock in a room is not necessarily just a matter of chance and may even have a meaning. Pascal Dibie, a French cultural historian, has shown how the arrangement of hammocks among indigenous peoples in the Amazon region reflects the social relationships of those who use them. Dibie explains, for example, that in the communal rooms of the Bari “the hammocks are placed at different heights that signify the age, gender, family membership, and symbolic relationships linking their owners to one another and to the universe of the house.” Young unmarried men sleep almost two meters (six and one-half feet) above the ground in the “sky” of the house and need ropes to reach their beds.

The wave of mechanization in the late nineteenth century brought changes to the hammock. For example, its netting could be reinforced with wooden slats to improve the tension. Round nets draped around the hammock could ward off pesky mosquitoes. And a blind pulled up across the entire contraption could even protect the occupant from painful sunburn.

One clever inventor hung a hammock in a large inverted tricycle and added a waterproof tentlike
cover that, according to the patent, could turn a “vehicle” designed for rocking and reclining into a full-fledged bedroom. Was it a genuinely useful creation or just a dubious technical curiosity?

My bicycle is my castle

A hybrid of hammock and recliner—one of history’s many forgotten “solutions of motion problems,” in the words of Sigfried Giedion—could be found in the self-adjusting hammock chair, which was designed to be suspended from a tree. This innovation replaced the often difficult-to-handle net with a piece of canvas stretched within a frame. According to the manufacturer, this design prevents “drawing the clothing so tightly around the body, thus making it just as cool, while the annoyance of catching buttons tearing down the lady’s hair, and the double somersault in the air is avoided.” Although the
hammock chair has not survived to the present day, it’s not all that far removed from a patio swing with flowered cushions for the seat and back. If the seat is big enough, you can lie down in it as well.

Each to their own: “self-adjusting hammock chair” for husband and wife