THE CAUSE OF INSOMNIA. Thoughts Suggested by the Suicide of a Brooklyn Man.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 340, 6 February 1889, Page 3

THE CAUSE OF INSOMNIA. Thoughts Suggested by the Suicide of a Brooklyn Man.

The suicide of Carl Mueller, a New York commission merchant residing in Brooklyn, was a terrible illustration of the desperate straits to which a person can be dii\en by sleeplessness. Mr M ueller was a widower, and two of his four daughters, being unmarried, lived with their father, who had a country seat ao Nyack on the Hudson. He suffered terribly from insomnia, and was under the treatment of Dr. Rushmoro, a prominent New York physician ; but no drugs could reach such a case. The patient was a rich man, yet his insomnia, which had become chronic, \va3 said to be due originally to anxiety about business and loss of health. It is a well-known fact that loss of sleep, carried too far, will produce insanity. What its tortures are to the victims of chronic insomnia, who get barely enough sleep to escape absolute insanity, none but themselves can tell. If anything could excuse the desperate resorb to suicide it would seem to be such a condition as this New York commission merchant's. We are not saying that even that would be a justification, but it would go further toward the form and substance of an excuse than most of the causes which do lead to that terrible but frequent act. The doctors do not seem tobe quite agreed | upon it, but it is believed there is a fine, extremely delicate something, which is called, for lack of a better name, the nerve fluid. This fine electric substance, it is thought (though its very existence is still by many denied), covers each nerve as in a bath, its production going on mysteriously and exclusively during the hours of sleep — and sleep itself is still about as great a mystery as what the poet Shelley calls ' its brother ' death. The theory is that when the supply of this delicate but vitally important nerve fluid is enough for the new day and its work the sleeper naturally awakes. He has received the mysterious full office of saving sleep : Sleep, that knits upon the ravcl'd. Blecvc of care, The death of cacli clay's life, sore labour's balli. Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. And that last pregnant line is as true as anything in Shakespeare. Wounds heal, the sick recover, the world of fears and phantasms is all changed during that mysterious state, in which the life-giving forces of the inner spiritual self arc more directly brought to bear, to saving purpose, upon the disturbed physical body. If the theory of the sleep supply is correct, it is evident that some men requite much more sleep than others. The iii&t Napoleon, ib was said, in all his campaigns never needed more than from three to four hours's sleep. If the nerve-food theory is correct, his interior processes must have developed the mystic fluid faster, more copiously, than most other men's systems do it. But the theory is that if this supply of vitalising, steadying ner\e fluid is lacking the nerves become abnormally sensithe and irritable — almost as if they were bare — and the victim differs coirespondingly. Tf the deprivation is continued for many successive days the sufferer goes crazy. Drugs, it is certain, do not cure this evil. Some of the bromides — as those oE potassa and oE sodium — by driving much of the blood out of the brain do, no doubt, lor a while at least, greatly aid in bringing sleep to those who&o ovcrwakefulness is caused by too great mental activity, and who arc kept awake — as, indeed, the victim of insomnia is likely to be, in any case— by the presence of too much blood in the brain, even after going to bed at night. In the normal play of all the healthy foices the blood vessels that supply the brain rapidly contract, from the top down ward, when the individual composes himself to sleep, and thus by emptying the the brain unconsciously force the state of slumber, which at once results upon the expulsion of the blood. But the use of bromide if persisted in is attended by several bad consequences, one of which is the serious injury of the stomach, and the prolonged use of such a remedy is not advised by the medical faculty. Morphine must not be used much. Drugs, surely aio not adequate to correct the ailment.