“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?” Yes, sleep can do this; and illness has need of just such comfort. The enforced idleness leads to much reflection and the nervous system is then ill-adapted to endure emotional strain. If pain be added there is still greater need for sleep. Nor is pain absolutely hostile to sleep: the writer can often go to sleep while the dentist is drilling and filling his teeth, and Dr. J. Howard Reed says that this is not very uncommon. Pain is Nature’s strong protest against overstimulation or overexertion and the exhaustion which it occasions is itself conducive to sleep. It would be better for us to heed that protest and use our intelligence to secure sound, refreshing sleep, that Nature might perfect her cures. CHAPTER XIV THE SLEEPLESSNESS OF PAIN He kisses brows that ache from earthly care; He soothes to peace the indignant souls of slaves. EDGAR FAWCETT. Sometimes we are kept awake by pain. Some persons suffer pain that has no remission, except the temporary deadness that comes from nervous exhaustion—and sleep. But sometimes the hardest torture is the thought that the pain is unnecessary or useless. I went once to visit a friend, whom I found suffering from the worst abscesses on the back of the neck that I ever saw, so frightful that the sight of them made me, who am a strong man, feel faint. I asked sympathetically what was the matter. “Oh,” he said, “I’m getting some experience.” That consciousness that such pain was useful helped to make the agony less unendurable. In fact, though he did not see it all then, he was getting just what he and those about him needed. He was a vigorous man, who took to rural work in a place where the food was excellent; he was naturally gluttonous and overate, hence the boils. This he learned; and also how to bear pain. There are ways of bearing pain more easily. We must consider the pain philosophically, and treat it from all three sides—the bodily, the intellectual, and the spiritual. However advanced we may be, it is foolish to deny that, in common with the rest of mankind, we are more or less in what Paul called the bonds of the flesh. To try to treat an aching tooth without physical means is like trying to grow a new leg instead of getting an artificial one. There was a stage in man’s Pre-Adamite progress from the amœba when, like the crab, he could grow new legs. Possibly, by discarding all other faculties, men might again be able to grow new legs: but it would not pay.