INSOMNIA

Evening Star, Issue 16197, 19 August 1916, Page 2

INSOMNIA

Ins<7sinia is a feU affliction, and it is .increasing at a rapid rate. It is not, in,<kod, a wholly modern complaint. The .ancients■'knew-'it. The Hebrew Psalms havo many s references to sleeplessness. .Plutarch tells ns that Pausanius,. from the hour that Cleonice fell dead a»> his feet pierced by his sword, was. a haunted man. "Ifrom that hour ho could icst no more." We need not refer to well-known instances, such as Lady Macbeth, or to the guilty spirit in one of Lander's poems: It vrakes me many mornings, many nights, ' -^- ria - fields of. poppies could not quiet it. 3ut thoagh Insomnia is. not a new thing in the, world, it is becoming more widej and intense. Whyte- Melville, in | one of his novels, makes: a. remorseful ! woman of the world, as eho bids a younnI friend good-night, eay : " What would I I "give-to yawn as honestly as.you do,.and I "to sleep sound. 1 once again as I used to | "-sleep when' I was a girl." 'There are i multitudes like that to-day. The.nace of | life, the nervous strain, the .turning, ovor I of work from the muscles to the mind, the celerity with which news travels, the concentration of life in crowded cities, the continuous pressure on the brain.and the swiftness with which it must work, the conquest of darkness and night by the development of gas ' and electricity— all these influences and. others are co-operatinrr to cm-tail rest and' make sleep difficult or impossible, And it seems.not in the leastlikely that these conditions are going to be relaxed in the future. Everything : points rather to their increase. ■*'*.* * .# * *

And so Insomnia threatens to become ere long one of the gravest of the perils that beset huma.ii life. It surely i=. " What can conduce to make more miserable than the inability to sleep':" It destroys the very citadel of life ami drives hundreds into suicide. Shall we ever be able to do without sleep? The modern man certainly seems to he .able to get along with a much decreased quantity of it, anv way. 'fhi s is partly due to letting out the contract for work to the mind. The manual laborer needs more sleep. The brain worker seems to bo able to do with much less. Napoleon managed to get along- on three or four hours. The late .Sir W. M. Ramsay, the distinguished chemist, found that also enough for him. Sir Felix Sinister, late president of the British Hankers' Association, needs five or six ; Ellen Terry about the same. Her case is rather remarkable, as the constant dramatic duties must involve a tremendous strain on the nervous system. But apparently not very many can go for any long period, without at least six or seven hours. Sir Isaac Newton wrote: " Morpheus is "my best companion. Without eight or "nine hours of him I am not worth a " scavenger's peruke." Curiously enough, some find that lying quiet in the darkness without sleeping serves the same purpose. Thus a famous scholar not long ago told a friend: " I am doing very well with "vegetarianism, and with long hours of •'darkness. I find that the darkness does "as much for mo as sleep." Some eke out the failure of the night by an afternoon nap. As a rule, doctors do not recommend this. It slows down digestion and interferes sometimes with sleep at night. Perhaps it is just as well, as it is not every man who can avail himself of the luxury. W© are inclined to think that no hard and fast rule can be laid down, JEach man must find out what suits him best, and be a law unto himself.

•The question was raised not long ago in a. London weekly as to the possibility of discovering something that would abolish sleep altogether. It was pointed out that Science has discovered means of inducing sleep. Why does it eeem incredible that one day it may discover a drug that may enable us to dispense entirely with sleep. Modern life is oppressed with the lack of time. Machinery has so increased the output, of material and the swiftness of locomotion that the great want is time to utilise what we have been able to produce. "No time" is the commonest phrase on the' lips of everybody to-day. This universal need may set scientists to work to supply it. We are finding substitutes for almost everything. It is not unlikely that we may light upon one in the not distant future that would enable us to do without sleep. The fact that many of our greatest men and women can do with very little sleep seems to indicate that as we strip off the physical we may cease to 'be dependent on what is now so essential to the manual worker. The effect of such a. discovery would be little less than revolutionary. It would add at one stroke a new working day to the present one of eight or ten hours. What money could not then be made ! If the nation that first achieved this discovery kept it -secret it would master the world in a short time. Night, no doubt, would still i come. But electricity is already changing] night.to day; so that it would not matter. The food quest-ion might become a pro- j blem. We should require, twice the quan-' tity of food that we now consume—may- \ bo more; but this would be met by the redoubled outcome. Besides, by that timei we shall have discovered the essences of I things. As it is now, we have to eat 6uch a quantity of superfluous material in order to get the -few grains of pure food which it contains. After a little we shall have it pure and concentrated in pilules and capsules, so that a man may take his dinner with him in his waistcoat pocket. The view which the moralist might entertain about the question ; would varv. When chloroform was introduced it was denounced as an interference with the will of God. and contrary to the Bible. But its discoverer—Sir James Simpson—wittilv pointed out that when God wished to perform an operation on Adam he threw him into a deep sleep, and the thing was

done. No doubt conservative theologians .would still contend that the old way was -best, and eloquent. preachers would prove .that it was contraryto Divine Eevelatioh.: But that would pass; and ero long we should have,':as.we.have had, denunciations of the waste of time,by fashionable .society. ..And only'.-those who could'..'not afford" to' buy the sleep antidote would have to continue in the old ways. But the.Socialist would arrive, demanding the nationalisation of the drug, and in a short time GoveiTOnents would be dealing.it out to everyone. It would be a horribly noisy world,.and some of us will hope.that"we shall have gone elsewhere before this discovery, is.made. - '

But, unfortunately, the magic drug that .will deliver us . from sleep has not yet materialised, and till it does we must go on as we are. But what are we to do with those who cannot go on—with the miserable victims of Insomnia? There is no end of recipes . for its cure—hop pillows, drinking .nutmeg, opium (a remedy of . despair), repeating prose of poetry, counting sheep, reading some soothing book-(one removed far from daily experience). The late Lord Avebury recommended, the Bible, .though it is doubtful if it would fulfil' . the conditions of shutting out practical affairs. When the novels of Dickens were appearing in magazine numbers, an old lady used to have her daughter read the instalments as they appeared. Just after she went to bed one -night she at last said peremptorily to her daughter to "put Dickens away at once "and get the Book (the Bible), or we'll "not get to sleep to-night." It was a compliment to the ' novelist, though whether or not to the Bible also may be questioned. Why does not somebody'suggest engaging a dull preacher? That would be a new employment for these, unfortunates, and it might have the advantage of relief to congregations. Dr Gordon, the celebrated Boston preacher, tells that in his young days, at the end of the first of his efforts.to preach, an old war veteran came up and said: "I like "to hear you preach. I have had the best "sleep to-day I have had for a month.' " Your voice reminds me of my mother's "lullaby." There are lots of preachers with voices like that, and they might in this way earn an honest penny and confer a boon upon the victims of Insomnia. We notice that the Presbyterian' Church thinks—or a part of it, any way—that the scale of remuneration to its "aged and infirm ministers " is very inadequate, not to use any harsher term. A man after 50 years' service is entitled to the munificent retiring allowance of £IOO a year! Perhaps these worn-out parsons might find a profitable and beneficent employment in the direction we have indicated. But there are other panaceas offered to the sleepless. There are baths, for instance. Thus, in the volume of the ' Contemporary Science' series on sleep, the author writes :

In a room of 60deg or 70deg Falir. let the patient stand with his head over the edge of the bath, douching head and face with water at lOOdeg. Then the entire body, except the head, is immersed in the bath at 98deg, rapidly raised to 105deg. or even llOdeg; "in a few minutes the bath is left, and the body wrapped in blankets, which absorb the moisture, and with the least possible exertion the .patient gets into his nightclothes and to bed with a warm bottle at his feet, and perhaps a little warm liquid food.

But tho " forlorn hopes" for the sleepless are many, and mostly useless. One of the most curious is that of a Professor Upson, who thinks insensible affections of the teeth cause much Insomnia. After which we may expect the barber to tell us that we should have our hair cut short, or the pedicurist to urge us to have our feet treated. The truth is that what will help one to sleep will be of no service to another. We are all different—have varied needs and peculiarities. At the risk of throwing doubt on what we havo just said, we yet venture to add one more remedy for this distressing malady of modern times. We read it some years ago in an American magazine. It was by the president of a university, who entered into an elaborate metaphysical disquisition on why it was bound to produce sleep, which we will spare our readers. This was the substance of the remedy:

Lie on your back in an easy posture. Close your eyes and take ten deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling very slowly. Then open your eyes and repeat the process; let the lids of the eyes slide down over them very slowly at the same time as the breath is exhaled. Continue these alternate processes, and in a short time the desired result will be attained. It will add to the effectiveness of the cure if the window be wide open and the room very cool. Also, a very strenuous effort of will should be made to concentrate the mind oh the breathing, and nothing else. It is difficult to do this, but a resolute effort will accomplish it. In the course of five or ten minutes the victim will have escaped from the fiend of Insomnia.

It is a kind of self-hypnotism. The present writer has had recourse to it often, and has rarely found it to fail.