ain needs more than the usual nourishment. If you have been
awake for an hour, and it is three hours after your last meal, take
half a cup, or a cup of hot milk. If you are awake for another two
hours take half a cup more, and so, at intervals of about two hours,
so long as you are awake throughout the night. Hot milk is nourishing
and a sedative. It is not inconvenient to have milk by the side of
one's bed, and a little saucepan and spirit lamp, so that the milk can
be heated without getting up, and the quiet simple occupation of
heating it is sometimes restful in itself.

There are five things to remember to help rest an overtired brain: 1. A
healthy indifference to wakefulness. 2. Concentration of the mind on
simple things. 3. Relaxation of the body. 4. Gentle rhythmic breathing
of fresh air. 5. Regular nourishment. If we do not lose courage, but
keep on steadily night after night, with a healthy persistence in
remembering and practising these five things, we shall often find that
what might have been a very long period of sleeplessness may be
materially shortened and that the sleep which follows the practice of
the exercises is better, sounder, and more refreshing, than the sleep
that came before. In many cases a long or short period of insomnia can
be absolutely prevented by just these simple means.

Here is perhaps the place to say that all narcotics are in such cases,
absolutely pernicious.

They may bring sleep at the time, but eventually they lose their
effect, and leave the nervous system in a state of strain which cannot
be helped by anything but time, through much suffering that might have
been avoided.

When we are not necessarily overtired but perhaps only a little tired
from the day's work, it is not uncommon to be kept awake by a flapping
curtain or a swinging door, by unusual noises in the streets, or by
people talking. How often we hear it said, "It did seem hard when I
went to bed tired last night that I should have been kept awake by a
noise like that--and now this morning, I am more tired than when I went
to bed."

The head nurse in a large hospital said once in distress: "I wish the
nurses could be taught to step lightly over my head, so that they would
not keep me awake at night." It would have been a surprise to her if
she had been told that her head could be taught to yield to the steps
of the nurses, so that their walking would not keep her awake.

It is resistance that keeps us awake in