Inmany cases no local ailment would appear to be responsible for the insomnia, and yet in every instance attention must be given to the body’s entire needs. The habit of deep breathing from the diaphragm must be developed and be regularly practised both indoors and out. This alone sufficed in one complicated case to bring sleep every night. The dietmust be carefully chosen and followed in the face of every importunity of a silly and capricious appetite. Tea and coffee, save at the morning meal, must be in almost every case eliminated from the menu. Constipation, which is responsible far oftener than we think for sleeplessness, must be, whenever possible, at once corrected without resort to purgatives and enemas.10The hot bath sometimes brings sleep by relieving the congestion of the brain, but contraction of the blood-vessels oftenfollows with such promptness that the hot-water bottle applied to the feet or the back of the neck or both is likely to be of more service.
If running up and down stairs or exercise in that wood-pile now imaginary in the average home leaves the sufferer as wide awake as ever, Doctor J. B. Learned’s provision for taking exercise in bed without displacement of the covering will sometimes relieve both the cerebral congestion and the psychical exhilaration and let the wakeful one drop off to sleep at the drowsy moment, which isapt to pass if the exercise is taken out of bed and even scanty preparations have in consequence to be made for retiring.