SLEEPLESSNESS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
Sia,—" F. P. C." seems to me to suggest a remedy that does not touch the real disease. I am quite familiar with the relapse into the dream ; but it can only be done when you can begin to control your mind before you are really awake. The evil with most of us is that we wake, and wake to stay. I do not remember suffering from sleeplessness till I was a curate in London, seventeen years ago ; but it has stuck to me ever since in direct proportion to mental worry and absence of air and exercise. In those days, till I was stopped by the police, I used to gallop twice round the Park before the early morning service. There were generally from three to five people in the Row the first time I went round. It is not, therefore, either early rising or fresh air taken by itself that will stop it. But loss of air and exercise is a great contributing cause. To walk even one mile in the day is a grand thing.
" F. P. C." correctly indicates " many different sources," but incorrectly speaks of " artifices." The remedy is not an artifice, but a method. At the moment, the best thing one can do is to get up, drink half-a-glass of water, and walk round the room. The slight alteration of cold and warmth has a soporific effect. The method is,—Live healthily. Avoid too little and too much exercise, food, particularly wine. Dine
lightly, eating very little meat; drink one glass only of wine. Bath an hour before dinner, not before going to bed. Re- member that after any great exertion, it is not one night's rest, nor two nights' rest, but chiefly the rest of the day between them, that will restore vitality. I understand that the Duke used to march four days and rest his men the fifth, when he was not racing the spoilt child of victory to So lamanea Do something in the evening that does not excite you, some- thing like whist, that does itself mechanically. Decide how much sleep you ought to have—say, eight hours—and get up sternly when you have been in bed eight hours, however long you have been awake. Increase your air and exercise gradually. Pottering about with a hammer and a saw and a few hundred feet of wood for a month or two is a good beginning. Of course, avoid tea and coffee after dinner ; probably 5 o'clock should ring in cocoa rather than an anti-soporific.
I believe it is a common error to increase fatigue. There are cases where it should be diminished. The thing is due to diminished vitality. Increased fatigue further reduces the vitality. I have often found, to my surprise, a good night follow a day's absolute rest.
Any one who has ever done what, to a man of his inches round the chest, is forced marching for fourteen days together, knows the nervous irritation with which he flings himself on the grass for the next three days, unable either to move or to lie still. The same nervous irritation punishes overwork within the four seas, though the work may not be so obviously excessive as it is to leave camp before sunrise, and pitch your tent after dark. This nervous irritation can only be dealt with by absolute repose—flat—by day as well as by night, with the minimum of food.
When the day is begun without a bright voluntary craving for work, day-rest is indicated; and if it is not forthcoming, insomnia will result. Perhaps it is part of the same principle that neuralgia attacks you when you are low. Personally, I should advise,—Give up tobacco. But I know my ignorance of other men, so I limit myself to this,—Never use tobacco as a
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