Frequent impressions on the mind, or calls on the attention, tend to make us sleepy; thus looking at pictures, the attempt to study, driving in a carriage. In extreme cases this is very marked. A boy named Caspar Hauser was shut up alone in a gloomy little room until he was about eighteen years old; then he was brought to NÜrnberg and abandoned in the street; this was in 1828. He was to all intents a baby and could not walk, nor speak, nor see clearly, as he had never known any of the common objects of life—men or animals or plants, or the moon or sun or even the sky.

He would go to sleep instantly on being taken outside the house, because the number of new sensations instantly tired his consciousness.

For the same reason that the consciousness is quickly exhausted, many old or delicate persons readily fall asleep. Marie de ManacÉÏne says that Moivre, the French mathematician, used to sleep twenty hours a day during his old age, leaving only four for science and the other occupations of life.

Monotony naturally fatigues consciousness and is often successfully used to produce sleep; the regular dropping of water, the sound of a brook will put those to sleep whom it does not make nervous. Lullabies and slumber songs and dull lectures all come under the same head of devices to tire the consciousness.

Narcotic drugs do not weary consciousness; they simply destroy it. They stupefy us instead of inducing sleep. Those who would wisely learn about this by experiments upon others rather than upon themselves, will find it all in the article by Ringer and Sainsbury on “Sedatives” in Tuke’s “Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.” It is enough for us to be assured that narcotic sleep is less like real sleep than the hibernation of the animal is like repose. (But see “Remedies” in Appendix A.)

Henry Ward Beecher used to get up when he was sleepless and take a cold bath, a good device for a full-blooded, vigorous person: but a weak person would not “react” and get warm again. For such an one it would be better to sponge off and restore the circulation by rubbing. Some physicians have prescribed, with good success, blood-warm baths, beginning at a temperature of about 98 and heated up to 110 or 115 Fahrenheit. When the moisture has been absorbed by wrapping one’s self in a blanket, throw it off and get quickly into a warm bed. Mark Twain used to get to sleep by lying down on the bathroom floor after the bath.

Some, when other means fail, find it effective to place a cold-water bag at the back of the neck, or to rub the feet with a rough towel: with others, a hot-water bottle at the back of the neck works better. A warm footbath helps some persons. At the sanitariums they sponge with warm water, rub with wet salt, gently sponge it off, and dry the body—all of which helps the blood to the surface. It is always well to see that the bowels are emptied. Only trial and judgment will show whether any of these will effect a cure: they all aim at the same mark, to abstract the blood from the brain.

That drinking milk produces sleep in some persons may probably be due to the lactic acid in the milk, which is a soporific like morphine. Perhaps its use is to help young animals to the long sleeps they need.

Willard Moyer, in an entertaining essay, tells us that it is often advisable for the stomach to have sufficient work for the blood to do so as to call it from the brain. This does not mean that a meal that will overload the stomach is a cure for insomnia, but that something light, such as a cup of warm milk and a cracker, may often “send one comfortably to sleep like a drowsy kitten or a well-fed baby.” A. Fleming, following Durham, the author of the “Psychology of Sleep,” showed that to deprive the brain of blood by pressing the carotid arteries for thirty seconds brought immediate and deep sleep, but it only continued while all pulsation of these arteries is stopped.[7]

It has been found by cruel experiments on young puppies that sleep is more necessary to them than food, as they die after being kept awake four or five days, but may live ten or fifteen days without food. They easily go to sleep when their heads are level with their bodies, and they will not go to sleep with their heads lower than their bodies: of course, the raised head drains some blood out of the brain.

This is the reason that heat or extreme cold, both of which bring the blood to the surface and drain it away from the brain, will often produce sleep. That is why the cowboy likes to sleep with his feet to the fire. On the other hand, the demand on the heart of cold hands or feet for more blood to keep them warm may make the heart pump so strongly that it sends more blood to the brain and keeps one awake. So also joy, anger, or anxiety cause a flow of blood to the brain and hinder sleep.

Becker and Schuller have treated insomnia by wrapping the entire body in wet sheets and also by applying cold compresses to the head. This last device is used by students, with doubtful success, “to keep the brain cool”; it is sometimes affected because it looks like working hard. Sometimes an ice cap, a double rubber cap filled with cold water, will bring sleep.

The Russian nobles used to make servants scratch their heels for a long time; our ladies have their hair brushed; and A. H. Savage-Landor says that Corean mothers put their babies to sleep by scratching them gently on the stomach. I have tried this rubbing, rather than scratching, with great success. Spanish women rub the children’s upper spine to put them to sleep. Light exercise before lying down is often a good expedient.

Sometimes a pillow of heated hops or of balsam pine needles will induce sleep. To change the hour of going to bed occasionally, yielding to apparently untimely drowsiness, often helps, as it accustoms us to gain sleep at irregular times.

To “relax,” to let the muscles become perfectly loose, is an art, though it should be natural to one going to sleep. Mrs. Richard Hovey recommends shaking the fingers, letting them hang loose like a bunch of strings of beads, and extending the movement to the wrist, arms, feet, and legs. This is the best form of calisthenic exercise for sleeplessness. It aids us in getting limp so as to lie at ease.