In children sleeplessness is often due to the bad habit of picking a child up whenever it cries, usually from the pain of indigestion due to having been given unsuitable food.  Feed children properly, and train them to regular retiring hours.  School home-work may cause insomnia; if so, forbid it.

Man spends a third of his life in the bedroom, which should be furnished and used for no other purpose.  Pictures, drapery above or below the bed, and wallpaper with weird designs in glaring colours are undesirable.  The wall should be distempered a quiet green or blue tint, and the ceiling cream.  A bedroom should never be made a storeroom for odds and ends, nor is the space beneath the bed suitable for trunks; least of all for a soiled-linen basket.

Some time before retiring, excitement and mental work should be avoided.  The patient should take a quiet walk after supper, drink no fluid, empty bladder and bowels, and take a hot foot-bath.

Retire and rise punctually, for the brain, like most other organs, may be trained to definite habits with patience.

If sleeplessness be ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to an empty stomach, a glass of hot milk and two plain biscuits should be taken in bed; dyspeptics should take no food for three hours before retiring.  If the patient wakes in the early morning he may find a glass of milk (warmed on a spirit-stove by the bedside) and a few plain biscuits of value.

A victim of insomnia should lie on his side on a firm bed with warm, light coverings, open the window, close the door, and endeavour to fix his attention on some monotonous idea; such as watching a flock of white sheep jump a hedge.  Think of trifles to avoid thinking of troubles.

How often do we hear people complain that they suffer from insomnia, when in fact they get a reasonable amount of sleep, and indeed often keep others awake by their snoring.

When you wake, get up, for a second sleep does no good.  When some one, on seeing the narrow camp-bed in which Wellington slept, said:  “There is no room to turn about in it,” the Iron Duke replied:  “When a man begins to turn about in his bed it is time he turned out of it.”

The only safe narcotic is a day’s hard work.  For severe insomnia consult a doctor; do not take drugs—­that way lies ruin.  By taking narcotics, or patent remedies containing powerful drugs, you will easily get sleep—­for a time only—­and then fall a slave to the drug.  Such victims may be seen in dozens in any large asylum.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVII

THE EFFECTS OF IMAGINATION

“The surest way to health, say what they will
Is never to suppose we shall be ill;
Most of the ailments we poor mortals know
From doctors and imagination flow.” 

          
                      —­Churchill.