His first ten years in the ministry were checkered by so many stubborn attacks of insomnia that he was more than once on the verge of a complete breakdown, from which the drugs the doctors gave him furnished only temporary relief.

Two years ago, after six weeks of sleeplessness during which he had at his doctor’s orders taken a hypnotic every night, he was able to sleep at most three hours out of every twenty-four and was haunted by obsessions and pervasive fears. When even morphia failed to induce anything more than extreme drowsiness and the heart’s action was so weak that strychnine was prescribed to make it function properly, one sleepless night a physician peremptorily bade him keep in the sleep position and never move, breathe regularly, keep his eyes closed as in sleep, and in every way imaginable to simulate sleep.

This proved to be the turning point in his experience. Sleep came night after night in consequence of his unvarying obedience to the doctor’s orders. From one source or another he discovered how to relax and to suggest sleep to himself. Within a month he had learned to sleep at will, and only once in two years, when for some weeks there was continuous local pain, has his sleep been interrupted. The average both of physical and of mental health has been at least doubled, and these two years past he has done, without fatigue of mind or body, at least twice as much work as in any two years of his life before.

B.—Waking in the middle of the night

A widow, seventy-three years of age, suffering for twelve years from neurasthenia, was apt to wake about the middle of every night and to go to sleep no more. The loss of sleep was bad enough, but the morbid fancies which invariably came in swarms sometimes all but drove her to distraction. There was such a bad family history as to sleep and such poor circulation with its inevitable cold feet, that the physician gave me little hope of relieving her insomnia. During the first month of her treatment I, therefore, confined myself almost entirely to the upbuilding of her faith by a course of optimistic reading and by suggestion. I seldom spoke about her sleeplessness at all. To her surprise and mine in a few weeks her sleep began to improve. At the end of two months, though she still awoke two or three nights every week, no morbid fancies came. She filled up her mind with wholesome thoughts, repeated again and again the auto-suggestions on page 68, and usually awoke almost as much refreshed as though she had slept the whole night through. Now after almost a year she reports what used to be one bad night out of every four or five, but as compared with the bad nights—four or five a week—of former years it were better called, she thinks, a good night than a bad one.

C.—Waking early in the morning

1. A college girl of unusual ability and character had practically all her life been inclined to wake at two or three o’clock in the morning and often go to sleep no more; or if she went to sleep, to sleep badly and be subject to hideous dreams and horrible nightmares. After one treatment, June 15th, she began at once to sleep much better. Though she sometimes woke as formerly at two or three, she at once by relaxation and auto-suggestion usually went off to sleep again and suffered little from dreams and nightmares. She has had two treatments since, and is not only much improved in body but is happier and more serene in mind.

2. The Emmanuel Clinic in Boston reports the case of an unmarried woman, fifty-two years old, who usually slept four hours a night, awaking at 2.30 and never sleeping more. Her treatment was begun June 20, 1907, and was followed by immediate improvement. By July 1, 1907, she was sleeping without waking eight hours every night, and reported August, 1908, that the improvement had become permanent.

D.—Semi-sleep

1. A college girl had never had the feeling of being sound asleep. She thought she was half conscious the night through. What sleep she got never seemed to refresh her. She came to me for treatment, February 7, 1908, slept somewhat better for a night or two, and came back, February 14th, 18th, 25th, for other treatments. On March 13th she reported that though she was not completely cured she was sleeping more soundly and felt better in every way. There was in this case the unhappy complication of organic heart trouble.