1. The Emmanuel Clinic in Boston reports the case of a distinguished lawyer who after nine months of insomnia came to Emmanuel Church for counsel. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His habit was to take his work and worries every night to bed with him. He was advised to submit to the rest cure under a good neurologist. He replied that, with important cases coming up at once for trial, rest was impossible. In fact, he could at most spend a few hours in Boston. The causes of insomnia were then explained to him. Suggestions were given looking toward self-help. The importance of cheerful and uplifting thoughts was emphasised. He went away an hour later to report in a few weeks that he was entirely cured and had not felt so well since he was a boy.

2. Dubois (p. 340) speaks of a physician twenty-three years of age who had suffered for nine months from persistent insomnia. By bromides, bathing, travel, and the cessation of all work, he had obtained only transient results. Dubois drew his attention to the psychic causes of insomnia, counselled the immediate abandonment both of the treatment he had been giving himself and of all apprehension of insomnia. In a few days sleep returned, the convalescent resumed his customary duties, and was soon completely well again.

B.—Profound Suggestion

Forel (p. 252) describes the case of a working-girl who suffered for a year and a half from extreme sleeplessness. All means for her relief failed. Forel induced profound suggestion, let her sleep about an hour every day while she was still in his clinic room, and after three weeks discharged her completely cured and able regularly to sleep nine hours out of every twenty-four.

2. CURED BY FAITH REINFORCED BY SUGGESTION

A.—Inability to go to sleep on going to bed

A clergyman forty years of age had inherited a tendency to sleeplessness. Even as a child it was not uncommon for him to lie awake an hour or two after getting into bed. As he passed into his teens the presence of his brother or a boy friend in the same bed would invariably keep him wide awake the whole night through. At college the unusual strain of extra work or of examinations was likely to drive sleep entirely away, and only with the help of bromides at special seasons was he able to get through his studies and take his place at last among the honour men.

His first years out of college were spent in graduate study and educational work, and were made miserable by the gradual increase of insomnia, which shut him out of many social pleasures and impaired his efficiency.

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.

2. To the Emmanuel Clinic in Boston came, January 2, 1908, a clergyman forty-nine years old who reported that for years he had never slept, but merely dozed. He gave up preaching in 1903; then resumed it only to abandon it again in April, 1907. After treatment from January 2nd to March 9th he was discharged, much improved, and on May 4th he reported that he was still improving, and is now sleeping well from six and a half to seven hours every night.

E.—Insomnia from psychical shock

A woman thirty-four years old was plunged into insomnia six years ago by the psychical shock which followed a violent attack made on her by an insane woman. Her habit afterwards was to lie awake for three or four hours after retiring, and then to sleep about two hours every night. Whenever she lay down to sleep, whether her eyes were open or closed, she felt herself surrounded by people, some of whom had been dead for several years, and one of whom she fancied wished to kill her. To the hallucinations dizziness was often added. Bromides which she had long been taking began at last to lose their effect. Treatment of her was begun at the Emmanuel Clinic in Boston on February 25, 1908. By March 10th she was sleeping better, though not soundly, and for thirteen nights the hallucinations had been absent. April 8th she reported that the visions still came now and then but were fewer and less terrifying. By May 21st the dizziness had disappeared, the hallucinations had not come for several weeks, her mind was clear, her sleep was much improved, and she was sure that she was getting well.

F.—Insomnia from family trouble

A mother forty-one years of age had suffered several family bereavements. Her children had been sick more than is common. Her brother had been burned to death. She herself had undergone a surgical operation. For seven years she had suffered from insomnia, never even temporarily relieved except by taking sulphonal, trional, etc. It seemed to be the fear of sleeplessness that usually kept her from her sleep. Under treatment at the Emmanuel Clinic in Boston from September 21, 1907, to January 27, 1908, she steadily improved, and is now in every way much better.

THE END

A Selection from the
Catalogue of

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Complete Catalogues sent
on application