sleep, but from worry
and tossing. Often they spend a good deal of the night feeling sorry
for themselves. They turn and toss, exclaiming with each turn: "Why
don't I sleep? How badly I shall feel to-morrow! What a night! What a
night!" Such a spree of emotionalism can hardly fail to tire, but it
is not fair to blame the insomnia.

He who makes up his mind to it can rest almost as well without sleep
as with it, provided he keeps his mind calm and his body relaxed.
"Decent hygienic conditions" demand not necessarily eight hours of
sleep but eight hours of quiet rest in bed. Tossing about drives away
sleep and uses up energy. I make it a rule that my patients shall not
turn over more than four times during the night. This is more
important than that they should sleep. To be sure, I do not stay awake
to enforce the rule, but most people catch the idea very quickly and
before they know it they are sleeping.

HOW TO GO TO SLEEP

=Ceasing to Care.= The best way to learn to sleep is not to care
whether you do or not. Nothing could be better than DuBois's advice:
"Don't look for sleep; it flies away like a pigeon when one pursues
it."[58] Attention to anything keeps the mind awake, and most of all,
attention to sleep. More than one person has waked up to see whether
or not he was going to sleep. We cannot, however, fool ourselves by
merely pretending indifference. The only sensible way is to get the
facts firmly fixed in our minds so that we actually realize that we do
not need more sleep than our bodies take. As soon as it is realized
that insomnia is really of no importance, it tends to disappear.

[Footnote 58: DuBois: _Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders_, p.
339.]

=Catching the Idea.= There came one day for consultation a very
healthy-looking woman, a deaconess of the Lutheran Church. "Doctor,"
she said, "I came to get relief from insomnia. For twenty years I have
not slept more than one or two hours a night." "Why do you want more?"
I asked. "Why, isn't it very unhealthy not to sleep?" she exclaimed
in astonishment. "Evidently not," I answered.

This woman had tried every doctor she could think of, including the
splendid S. Weir Mitchell. Her insomnia had become a preoccupation
with her, her chief thought in life. All I did was to explain to her
that her body had been getting all the sleep it needed, and that
neither body nor mind was in the least run down after twenty years of
sleeplessness. "When you cease