Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-07-28
THE HORRORS OF INSOMNIA.
Futiiity of Prescribed Remedies-The
Genius of Sleep VIII Not Appear.


These who are afflicted with insomnia
know to the full the futility of recipes,
says the London Queen Some advocate
pine-needle pillow, some hop pillow,
Others one so hard that ii might have
Jacobs stone in the middle For the first
two you are oppressed by their odor-op-
pressed rather than soothed; the last
makes your head ache and gives YOU
sore spine all the day after. Others, again.
tell you to eat and drink before going to
bed. A "nightcap," they say, of genuine
! spirits, with a few biscuits munched dis
creetly, will do wonders for you. The
blood will be brought from the brain to
the stomach, and an active digestion will
cure your sleepessness like magic. You
follow their advice - the prescription
being pleasant-and you find that YOU
have had to take your liver and your
equity diathesis" in hand as the result,
with no better nights in the way of slum-
Der than before. You are told to battle
your face and wrists in cold water, and
you do SO. whereby you have swinging
cold which confines you to bed for a week
and to the house for fortnight
Then YOU have mental prophylactics,
aud you hear with envy how one man
cures himself of insomnia, drives off the
hays who beset him, and wins back the
sweet Genius of Sleep by counting i'm
aginary sheep jumping over an imaginary
fence. He goes off like lamb, he saws
| before he gets to the hundredth. You try
the same experiment and you go on to a
thousand or more, with the result of feel
ing in a kind of whirlwiud, where the
flying straws take the form of feecy ewes,
and the whirling dust heaps are acrobatic
rams. Your jumping sheep become as
torturing as that barrel-organ tune which
sounds in your ears, do what you will and
J they stick to your brain as the tune sticks
| reason or none.
! Now. then, you think you have finally
laid that noisy demon, and are free to
turn your mind to the contemplation of 81
lence. Not bit of it. Suddenly the
tune starts out again-louder, clearer.
more insisting than beforehand you have
to 60 over your work once more, and have
for the second time the bitterness of fail
ure. You try, too, TO come upon sleep by
repeating poetry-aIl the poetry you
know. Sometimes this has a lulling
effect, as when you pound away at piece
known by heart rs familiar as the alpha
bet. Bit for the most part you waken up
yourself by Just so much as you think to
have soothed; and the repetition of poetry
proves, like the counting of sheep, a men
tai stimulant instead of sedative Then
you are wider and wider awake than ever,
and your pains are increased, not
| lightened.
Then there flow in on you all the sor-
rows of your life, and everything YOU
would gladly forget insists on being re-
membered with Photographic elearness
and in gigantic proportions. Are you 4
little at cross corners with a beloved
friend the slight misunderstanding
which few moments of honest talk will
clear away, becomes the fracture of your
friendship, which no time, no effort, can
ever repair. The word that was said in
thong htlessness becomes the intentional
insult, the designed outrage The look
that had no insignificance at all becomes
as the thrust of sword and the sting of a
whip; and wherever you can torture
yourself you do-all because the power of
sleep has gone from you and your feyeris
blood is firing your throbbing brain. So
with all your life.
If YOU are in a momentary difficulty
about money you are on the verge of ruin
and the threshold of the workhouse. II
you have had an infnitesimal check in
your career, you are cast down from your
secure holding and can never make your
footing secure again. Whatever may have
happened to ruffle the still waters of the
lake and break the deep silence OF the
woods is cataclysm, no less, and sleep
lessness exaggerates like the microphone
and makes the footsteps of fly like the
swinging tread of the grenadier Thus
you give yourself up for lost and to the
physical torments of your condition are
added the mental agonies of fear, despair
and anticipated destruction.
When the cares of the world hang heaY-
ily, and there is scarcely any bright lining
to the dark clouds which occasionally hang
over every life, think not if your domestic
situation were different it would not be so
There is no state in life exempt from care:
and sorrow.