Sleeplessness is often referred to as a cause of insanity, but it would be much nearer the truth to say that insanity causes sleeplessness. Dr. Rush says: “A dream is a transient paroxysm of delirium, and delirium a perpetual dream.” Not every dreamer becomes insane, in the common understanding of the term, nor every person who is distressed by wakefulness; nor do all those persons who dream dreams of a strange, droll, startling, heart-rending, exhausting character, become inmates of lunatic asylums, although all such are fit subjects for a rigid hygiene; and not a few out of this large number of bad dreamers—who are likewise afflicted with insomnia—but could with advantage place themselves under the charge of an expert in diseases of the brain, or even in an asylum, if either the former, or the physicians in charge of the latter, were in all regards thoroughly equipped for their work—a rare circumstance indeed. Normal sleep is dreamless; in default of this total oblivion, sleep is only partial—it is not perfect nervous repose. No person who suffers severely from indigestion but is also troubled with much dreaming, and, more or
less, with wakefulness; and no person who has these last-named symptoms but can safely set them down; at least in great measure, to digestive disorder; and as, almost invariably, removable by improved habits.
Some very wise men have stated as their belief, that no man living is really of sound mind, any more than of sound body, in the strictest application of the term; all have their crazy aspects—their “weak spots,” as we say; and the anxious, brooding man, who fears the loss of his reason, may take courage from the thought that his symptoms are only a little worse than his neighbor’s, and only demand of him to diminish his dyspepsia if he would become normally insane! To attack insomnia as a disease instead of a symptom, is sure to result in discomfiture in the great majority of cases, and is in every instance unsound in principle. Once established, this condition of wakefulness tends to perpetuate itself; but this would be otherwise with an absolutely natural regimen. A man is wakeful at night because under his present physical condition he ought to be—just as in diarrhœa, the looseness is doing its work of cure. So with all symptoms. Pain has its office, and this is coming to be better understood; is already well known to thoughtful, well-informed people; and the wakefulness of which so many complain, and which, in some cases, is of the most distressing, painful character, is as truly normal, considering the present physical state of the sufferer’s brain, as is pain following a cut. As an aid in the removal of this symptom, next to a radical reform in one’s living habits, which is the only possible
cure for the disease, the above reasoning is one of the most effectual.
When a man is wounded severely his anxiety is not increased by the pain; it causes no additional alarm, because he knows that it is entirely natural; let him know that sleeplessness is an analogue of pain, and he will, or may, bear it philosophically, and thus tend to its removal. He has a poverty-stricken mind, indeed, who can not, under such circumstances, pass an hour, or several of them, in comparative comfort, knowing that sleep will come in good time. But, thinking all the while that it is sleep only that he needs, his sleeplessness distresses him, causes him to be more and more alarmed, and, consequently, has the effect to postpone the oblivion so devoutly prayed for, but so little earned. To deserve sleep is to have it. Let the insomniac read the concluding article of this volume, and by the light of it review the hints on diet, air, exercise, etc., in the body of the article on consumption, so as to know what he has to do to become a good man, physiologically; and go to bed at about the same hour every night, if possible, or at any rate when he does lie down to sleep it should be after a quiet hour or half-hour devoted to peaceful and thought-steadying occupations, never exciting mental exercise, whether amusing or instructive; and when he draws the blankets about him, let it be with a sublime indifference as to whether he shall or shall not go to sleep promptly. “As to the subduing of the senses, the attempt to shut out external impressions by deafening the ears, closing the eyes, and lowering the sensibilities generally, is
in itself a frequently recognizable and always possible cause of persistent wakefulness. The effort to compose the mind (after lying down) and subdue the activity of the senses is made by the higher mental faculty, a part or function of the organism which, of all others, needs to be itself restful in order that the physico-mental being may sleep. It is, therefore, obvious that an endeavor to go to sleep is a mistake.”[50]
[50] J. Mortimore Granville, M.D., in Good Words.
Rather let me, when staring out into the darkness,—for to attempt to shut out the sense of sight by closing the eyes is always to render the inner-mental sense increasingly acute: “the field of sight is soon crowded with grotesque and rapidly changing images—a phantasmagoria, the worrying effect of which is only a too familiar experience of the sleep waiter,” and all the mental senses are in like manner stimulated, and their acuteness intensified, by the endeavor to lower the sensibility of the sense organs; and, worst of all, to narcotize them with drugs or sleeping-draughts is irrational and its effects injurious, and if long continued, fatal;—rather, I repeat, having ears to hear, let me hear, and eyes to see, see; and a brain, let me think. Let the brain, the ears, and the eyes “forget their cunning,” only when the eyelids droop in sleep because I am sleepy. Meantime, not self-abasingly, but calmly and dispassionately, would I philosophize thus: Well, I am in for it again! I would like to sleep promptly, soundly, and long; why do I not? I suspect that I am not running this physico-mental machine even in a fairly physiological manner; I cause
it to run at an abnormal rate during the day, and keep up intense mental excitement through stimulation of one sort or another, prolonging excessive mental activity too far on toward the night; and because of this, and the lack of a fair degree of muscular exercise, I only half breathe; of my fifteen or sixteen inspirations per minute, not one distends the air cells of my lungs to half their capacity. [Thus it transpires that the organism suffers in two ways, viz.: (1) the circulation is not sufficiently oxygenated for its general purposes; and (2) the waste matters are not “pumped out” of the substance of the brain,[51] as effectually as need be]. My coffee was strong and nice this morning; it stimulated me very satisfactorily throughout the day; and, what I had not bargained for, I am still feeling the spur (see article on Coffee). That new brand of cigars is exquisitely flavored; but, upon the whole, a perfect night’s sleep would be far more exquisite; at least, just now I am in the mood to think so. I sneered at that food-reformer who told me he was never a good sleeper until his present simple, natural habits made him so; but now, just at this
moment, it seems as if it would be a good trade to exchange some of my favorite dishes for coarse food and balmy sleep! Oh, if I only could get “balmy” that way every night! I “got the best” of —— yesterday morning on those —— stocks, and spent an hour, bent over my desk, figuring to see how I could get hold of some more at that price, before its holders had time to ascertain its real value. I will tell the widow —— in the morning, what it is worth, instead of trying to buy hers under-price as I contemplated doing. And so I would con over and look through myself and my habits, feeling sure that my eyelids would droop, and sleep would come before I should have completed the work of reform; and I am sure that every sufferer will find that a real reform—a permanent reform—will unfailingly lead on to health, and so to sweet and satisfactory sleep.