ep should, if possible, be spent
quietly, to smooth the way towards sound and refreshing rest. The sleep
induced by medicine is very often troubled and unsatisfactory. Medicines
of this sort should not be taken except on the advice of a physician.

While a hearty meal should not usually be taken just before bedtime, it is
not well to go to bed with a sense of positive faintness and hunger.
Rather, one should take a very light lunch of quite simple food as a
support for the next eight hours.

[Illustration: Fig. 122.--Trunk of the Left Pneumogastric.

(Showing its distribution by its branches and ganglia to the larynx,
pharynx, heart, lungs, and other parts.)]

It is better, as a rule, not to engage in severe study during the hours
just before bedtime. Neither body nor mind being at its best after the
fatigues of the day, study at that time wears upon the system more, and
the progress is less than at earlier hours. One hour of morning or day
study is worth a much longer time late at night. It is, therefore, an
economy both of time and of nerve force to use the day hours and the early
evening for study.

The so-called "cat naps" should never be made to serve as a substitute for
a full night's sleep. They are largely a matter of habit, and are
detrimental to some as well as beneficial to others. Late hours are
usually associated with exposure, excitement, and various other drains
upon the nerve force, and hence are injurious.

It is better to sleep on one or other side than on the back. The head
should be somewhat raised, and a mattress is better than a feather bed.
The bedclothes should be sufficient, but not too heavy. Light tends to
prevent sleep, as do loud or abrupt sounds, but monotonous sounds aid it.

291. Alcohol and the Brain. The unfortunate effects which alcoholic
drinks produce upon the brain and nervous system differ from the
destructive results upon other parts of the body in this respect, that
elsewhere the consequences are usually both less speedy and less obvious.
The stomach, the liver, and even the heart may endure for a while the
trespass of the narcotic poison, and not betray the invasion. But the
nervous system cannot, like them, suffer in silence.

In the other parts of the body the victim may (to a certain extent)
conceal from others the suffering of which he himself is painfully
conscious. But the tortured brain instantly reveals the calamity and the
shame, while the only one who may not f