Mr. Bigelow then cites from Jahr’s “Manual of Medicine” the fearful disturbances of sleep caused by fifteen drugs, all taken as samples from the list in their order under the single letter “A.” Contrary to the general belief, sleeplessness is more often a consequence of insanity than a cause of it. (See Appendix A.) CHAPTER XVI DEVICES FOR GOING TO SLEEP Southey, in “The Doctor,” thus summarizes some of the chief devices to attain sleep by monotony: “I listened to the river and to the ticking of my watch; I thought of all sleepy sounds and of all soporific things—the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarin’s head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum’s conversations, Mr. Proser’s poems, Mr. Laxative’s speeches, Mr. Lengthy’s sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed rushed with me round and round. At length Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo’s Divinity Lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere and the streaming candle-light, were all alike soporific; when he who, by strong effort, lifted up his head and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him asleep. Lettuces, cowslip wine, poppy syrup, mandragora, hop pillows, spider’s web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics would have failed—but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date, I found benefit from having attended the course.” Frequent impressions on the mind, or calls on the attention, tend to make us sleepy; thus looking at pictures, the attempt to study, driving in a carriage. In extreme cases this is very marked. A boy named Caspar Hauser was shut up alone in a gloomy little room until he was about eighteen years old; then he was brought to Nürnberg and abandoned in the street; this was in 1828. He was to all intents a baby and could not walk, nor speak, nor see clearly, as he had never known any of the common objects of life—men or animals or plants, or the moon or sun or even the sky. He would go to sleep instantly on being taken outside the house, because the number of new sensations instantly tired his consciousness. For the same reason that the consciousness is quickly exhausted, many old or delicate persons readily fall asleep. Marie de Manacéïne says that Moivre, the French mathematician, used to sleep twenty hours a day during his old age, leaving only four for science and the other occupations of life. Monotony naturally fatigues consciousness and is often successfully used to produce sleep; the regular dropping of water, the sound of a brook will put those to sleep whom it does not make nervous. Lullabies and slumber songs and dull lectures all come under the same head of devices to tire the consciousness.