[1] As good a book as any on the subject of sleep is Boris
Sidis's little monograph.


Sleeplessness often enough is a habit. Something happens to a man
that deeply stirs him, as an insult, or a falling out with a
friend, or the loss of money,--something which disturbs what we
call his poise or peace of mind. He becomes sleepless because,
when he goes to bed and the shock-absorbing objects of daily
interest are removed, his thoughts revert back to his difficulty;
he becomes again humiliated or grieved or thrown into an
emotional turmoil that prevents sleep. After the first night of
insomnia a new factor enters,--the fear of sleeplessness and the
conviction that one will not sleep. After a time the insult has
lost its sting, or the difficulty has been adjusted, there is no
more emotional distress, but there is the established
sleeplessness, based on habitual emotional reaction to sleep. I
know one lady whose fear reached the stage where she could not
even bear the thought of night and darkness. It is in these cases
that a powerful drug used two or three nights in succession
breaks up the sleepless habit and reestablishes the power to
sleep.

People differ in their capacity to form habits and in their love
of habits. The normal habits, thoroughness, neatness and method
come easily to some and are never really acquired by others.
People of an impetuous, explosive or reckless character, keenly
alive to every shade of difference in things, find it hard to be
methodical, to carry on routine. The impatient person has similar
difficulties. Whereas others take readily to the same methods of