CURES FOR INSOMNIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21086, 21 January 1932, Page 11

CURES FOR INSOMNIA.

MANY NOVEL REMEDIES. OLD KENTISH PRESCRIPTION. HYPNOSIS, HOT MILK AND HOPS. " If any of your readers can give the inquirer a cure for insomnia it would be the greatest boon to one who has suffered from this most distressing complaint for years. No doctors' or chemists' remedies have had any beneficial effects." This appeal, published in the Herald on Saturday, brought the writer in three days a great crop of suggestions from people who claim to have cured themselves of chronic sleeplessness. Some of the homely remedies described are wellknown household prescriptions banded down through individual families since the days of our great-grandmothers; others, some of them of a quaint and curious character, are not so familiar. Several people describe in detail the " electricity" or " penny" cure, in which a length of copper wire is earthed at one end and attached to a penny at the other. The end of the wire carrying the penny should hang over the bed from an insulated hook, and the patient, retiring at night, allows the penny to rest between the sleeping garment and the skin. Persons sleeping in wooden beds with kapok mattreoses that are bad conductors of electricity might advantageously experiment in this manner in an effort to restore natural contact with the earth. Sleeping on Hops. Two people whose homes were at one time in Kent, England, recall the oldfashioned Kentish remedy of sleeping on a pillow containing a packet of fresh or dried hops. One writer prescribes that a pound of hops should be placed in a flannel pillow-shaped bag, which should be warmed each night before resting the head upon it. "If this. give*, relief," he writes, " the sufferer should try to arrange a holiday in the hop gardens of Nelson during the next picking season, taking his meals with the pickers, picking hops himself and camping near the oast houses. The result will surprise him." Mental suggestion or hypnosis is recommended by many writers, one of whom states that he obtains certain relief by picturing in his mind the letters S.L.E.E.P. when he goes to bed. Sometimes he forms a mental picture of some peaceful picnic spot he has recently visited, steadily keeping it ip the mind's eye until he falls asleep. The use of coloured lights is recommended by some, or oven the tiny light of an oil lamp with the wick turned low. The light seems to have a hypnotic effect on the mind. The eyes should not be closed but should stare fixedly at the light until the patient falls asleep. " Personally," writes " Grandmother," " I find relief by reciting hymns or chapters of Holy Writ learned in childhood." Boxing the Compass. Some people claim to cure insomnia, by sleeping north and south, with their heads directed approximately to the magnetic Pole. If this has no effect, they suggest the patient should sleep facing east and west, in fact, boxing the compass until the position is found which gives most relief. Judging from the numerous references concerning it, a simple yet efficacious remedy for many sufferers is to drink a cup of scalded, not boiled, milk just before retiring to bed. One writer calls this "an almost infallible remedy." Another writer pours half a wineglass of sherry into' his milk. It effects a cure, he says, in three days for many people. The use of a very high pillow is also recommended, or a very low one if the patient has b?en in habit of sleeping on a high one. One correspondent states that he has obtained great benefit by learning to relax the muscles completely when reclining. Another recommends gentle exercises before retiring, or, during the daylight hours, a good deal of walking or gardening. " Few people do not sleep after a day's interesting work in the sunshine," he states. " The last meal should be about 6 p.m. and a glass of warm milk taken last thing at night."