Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia Part 10

Clothes should be light, loose, and warm. Epileptics should wear low, stiff collars, half a size too large, with clip ties. Such a combination does not form a tight band round the neck, and can quickly be removed if necessary.

Wear thick, woollen socks, and square-toed, low-heeled, double-soled boots.

Hats should be large, light, and of soft material. Woollen underwear is best. Change as often as possible, and aim at health, not appearance.

Let all rooms be well lighted, well ventilated, moderately heated, and spa.r.s.ely furnished with necessities. Shun draperies, have no window boxes, cut climbing plants ruthlessly away from the windows, and never obstruct chimneys.

Buy Muller's "My System", which gives a course of physical exercises without apparatus, which only take fifteen minutes a day. The patient must conscientiously perform the exercises each morning, not for a week, nor for a month, but for an indefinite period, or throughout life.

Finally, remember that so few die a natural death from senile decay because so few live a natural life.

CHAPTER XVI

SLEEPLESSNESS

"O magic sleep! O comfortable bird That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hushed and smooth."

--Keats.

Some men need only a few hours' sleep, but no one ever overslept himself in natural slumber. There are anecdotes of great men taking little sleep, but their power usually consisted in going without sleep for some days when necessary, and making up for it in one long, deep sleep. Neuropaths require from 10-13 hours to prepare the brain for the stress of the next day, but quality is more important than quant.i.ty.

Patients go to bed tired, but cannot sleep; fall asleep, and wake every other hour the night through; sleep till the small hours, and then wake, to get no more rest that night; only fall asleep when they should be rising; or have their slumber disturbed by nightmare, terrifying dreams, heart palpitation, and so on.

Noise often prevents sleep. A clock that chimes the quarters, or a watch that in the silence ticks with sledge-hammer beats, has invoked many a malediction. Traffic and other intermittent noises are very trying, as the victim waits for them to recur. Townsmen who seek rural quiet have got so used to town clatter, that barking dogs, rippling streams, lowing cows, rustling leaves, singing birds or chirruping insects keep them awake. Too much light, eating a heavy supper, all tend to banish repose, as do also violent emotions which produce toxins, torturing the brain and causing gruesome nightmares.

Grief and worry--especially business and domestic cares--constipation, indigestion, bad ventilation, stimulants, excitement and a hearty supper are a few of the many causes of insomnia.

In children sleeplessness is often due to the bad habit of picking a child up whenever it cries, usually from the pain of indigestion due to having been given unsuitable food. Feed children properly, and train them to regular retiring hours. School home-work may cause insomnia; if so, forbid it.

Man spends a third of his life in the bedroom, which should be furnished and used for no other purpose. Pictures, drapery above or below the bed, and wallpaper with weird designs in glaring colours are undesirable. The wall should be distempered a quiet green or blue tint, and the ceiling cream. A bedroom should never be made a storeroom for odds and ends, nor is the s.p.a.ce beneath the bed suitable for trunks; least of all for a soiled-linen basket.

Some time before retiring, excitement and mental work should be avoided.

The patient should take a quiet walk after supper, drink no fluid, empty bladder and bowels, and take a hot foot-bath.

Retire and rise punctually, for the brain, like most other organs, may be trained to definite habits with patience.

If sleeplessness be ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to an empty stomach, a gla.s.s of hot milk and two plain biscuits should be taken in bed; dyspeptics should take no food for three hours before retiring. If the patient wakes in the early morning he may find a gla.s.s of milk (warmed on a spirit-stove by the bedside) and a few plain biscuits of value.

A victim of insomnia should lie on his side on a firm bed with warm, light coverings, open the window, close the door, and endeavour to fix his attention on some monotonous idea; such as watching a flock of white sheep jump a hedge. Think of trifles to avoid thinking of troubles.

How often do we hear people complain that they suffer from insomnia, when in fact they get a reasonable amount of sleep, and indeed often keep others awake by their snoring.

When you wake, _get up_, for a second sleep does no good. When some one, on seeing the narrow camp-bed in which Wellington slept, said: "There is no room to turn about in it," the Iron Duke replied: "When a man begins to turn about in his bed it is time he turned out of it."

The only safe narcotic is a day's hard work. For severe insomnia consult a doctor; do not take drugs--that way lies ruin. By taking narcotics, or patent remedies containing powerful drugs, you will easily get sleep--for a time only--and then fall a slave to the drug. Such victims may be seen in dozens in any large asylum.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EFFECTS OF IMAGINATION

"The surest way to health, say what they will Is never to suppose we shall be ill; Most of the ailments we poor mortals know From doctors and imagination flow."

--Churchill.

"Men may die of imagination, So depe may impression be take."

--Chaucer.

"Suggestion is the introduction into the mind of a practical belief that works out its own fulfilment."--Guyau.

Man suffers from no purely imaginary ills, for mental ills are as real as physical ills, and though an individual be ailing simply because he persuades himself he is ailing, his mind so affects his body that he is actually unwell physically, though the cause of his trouble is purely mental.

The suffering of this world is out of all proportion to its actual disease, many people being tortured by fancied ills. Some dread a certain complaint because a relative has died of it.

Others are unwell, but while taking proper treatment they brood gloomily, and get worse instead of better as they should and _could do_.

Cheap medical and pseudo-medical works are not an unmixed blessing, for many a person who knows, and needs to know, nothing about disease, gets hold of one, and soon has most of the ills known to the faculty and some which are not.

If a patient be an optimist and persuades himself he is improving, he _does_ improve. This is the explanation of "Faith moving mountains", for the curative power of prayer, Christian Science, laying-on of hands, suggestion treatment and patent medicine, depends on man's own faith, not on the supernatural.

A doctor in whom a patient has perfect confidence, will do him far more good with the same medicines, or even with no medicines at all, than one of riper experience in whose skill he has no faith.

Eloquent, though often inaccurate accounts of the benefits derived from patent medicines are persistently advertised until the mind is so influenced by the constant reiteration of miraculous cures, that, either because the healing forces of the body are thereby stimulated, or because the disease is curable by suggestion, the patient is benefited by such medicines.

Thinking of pain makes it worse and vice versa.

The curative effects of auto-suggestion were demonstrated at the Siege of Breda in 1625. The garrison was on the point of surrender when a learned doctor eluded the besiegers, and got in with some minute phials of an extraordinary Eastern Elixir, one drop of which taken after each meal cured all the ills flesh was heir to; two drops were fatal.

The "learned doctor" was a quick-witted soldier, and the elixir was _coloured water_ sold by order of the commander. Its potency was due to the faith of all, who persuaded each other they were getting better, and an epidemic of infectious wellness followed ills due to depressed spirits.

One man after reading a list of symptoms said in great alarm: "Good Heavens. I have got that disease!" and, on turning the page, found it was... _pregnancy_.

As the great Scotch physiologist, Reid, said seventy years ago:

"Hope and joy promote the surface circulation of the body, and the elimination of waste matter and thus make the body capable of withstanding the causes which lead to disease, and of resisting it when formed. Grief, anguish and despair enfeeble the circulation, diminish or vitiate the secretions, favour the causes which induce disease, and impede the action of the mechanism by which the body may get rid of its maladies. An army when flushed with victory and elated with hope maintains a comparative immunity from disease under physical privations and sufferings which, under the opposite circ.u.mstances of defeat and despair, produce the most frightful ravages."

The cla.s.sic description of the woeful effects of imagination is in Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat". Harris, having a little time on his hands, strolls into a public library, picks up a medical work, and discovers he has every affliction therein mentioned, save housemaid's knee. He consults a doctor friend and is given a prescription. After an argument with an irate chemist, he finds he has been ordered to take beefsteak and porter, and not meddle with matters he does not understand. A sounder prescription never was penned.

CHAPTER XVIII

SUGGESTION TREATMENT

"To purge the veins Of melancholy, and clear the heart Of those black fumes that make it smart; And clear the brain of misty fogs Which dull our senses, our souls clog."

--Burton.

Hypnosis and suggestion have suffered from those people who put back every reform many years--quacks and cranks--for while science, with open mind, was testing this new treatment, the quacks exploited it up hill and down dale.

Yet there is nothing supernatural in suggestion, for we employ it on ourselves and others every hour we live. Conscience consists only of the countless stored-up suggestions of our education, which by opposing any contrary suggestions, cause uneasiness.