"Insomnia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have all the good food he wants, at suitable hours. To a boy thus engaged, the period from the time he falls asleep in the evening till next morning, is apt to be one of utter oblivion. That is the way to sleep. Older persons, troubled by insomnia and its usual cause, bad digestion, would do well to return to these simple and health-giving modes of life, best seen in an ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got a will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense as they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... around a green dome and gilt crosses, but it is all very mournful and depressing, especially to one fresh from Europe. This train has one advantage, there is no rattle or roar about it, as it steals like a silent ghost across the desolate steppes. As a cure for insomnia it would be invaluable, and we therefore sleep a good deal, but most of the day is passed in the restaurant. Here the military element is generally engrossed in an interminable game of Vint[1] (during the process of which a Jew civilian is mercilessly rooked), but our piano is a godsend and most ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... great blood purifier they also use a heap as a pillow if suffering from insomnia. It is hard to believe a black ever does suffer from insomnia, yet the cure ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... on service of heavy responsibility. I am now feeble with age, having served at so great a distance; I also deplore my stupidity, and am extremely apprehensive of my inability in performing the functions devolving upon me. Since the sixth or seventh moon of the year before last I have suffered from insomnia. A year ago my spirits became daily more abattu. In the second month of last year I suddenly experienced phlegm rising in my mouth, and vomited fresh red blood, without being able to stop it, so that ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... melts away, chattering down the road; it forms again, from another quarter, and again dissolves. Meaningless shouts and cries and songs resound from the hidden city. In the gypsy camp beside us insomnia reigns. A little forge is clinking and clanking. Donkeys raise their antiphonal lament. Dogs salute the stars in chorus. First a leader, far away, lifts a wailing, howling, shrieking note; then the mysterious unrest that torments ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the testimonial; many thanks for your blind, wondering letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery. Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep; well, I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have devoted the week to the envisagement of things, and while I lay awake last night the solution came to me as something final and irrevocable. Mistrusting the counsels of the night, when the brain is unduly excited by nervous insomnia, I have applied the test of a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... dead than alive, with racking pains, shiverings and exhaustion from prolonged insomnia, he was taken ashore in a Southern city and a physician summoned, who, with a promptness characteristic of the profession, administered a preparation of morphia, and the old fatal spell was renewed at once. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... then, we shall not rightly measure but as the outcome, the utterance, of a soul diseased, a soul permanently ill at ease. We find in their constant tension something of insomnia, of that sleeplessness which can never be a quite healthful condition of mind in a human body. Sometimes they are cries, cries of obscure pain rather than thoughts—those great fine sayings which seem ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... toxins secreted by intestinal bacteria and responsible for many of the symptoms of senility. It used to be thought that large doses of indol might be consumed with little or no effect on normal man, but now we know that headache, insomnia, confusion, irritability, decreased activity of the cells, and intoxication are possible from it. Comparatively small doses over a long time produce changes in organs that lead to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... awkward," she confessed thoughtfully. "But can't you say that you have insomnia, and can't sleep unless you are above the noise ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... because I wished to please the Warden of the prison, having learned from the prisoner the real cause of his sufferings, which sometimes assumed an acute form of violence and threats. During one of these painful minutes, when K.'s will power was weak, as a result of insomnia, from which he was suffering, I seated myself on his bed and treated him in general with fatherly kindness, and he blurted out everything to me right there ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... storekeeper asked Ajax outright if there were truth in the rumour that we were to be decorated with the blue ribbon, and my brother hinted mysteriously that even stranger things than that might happen. Jasperson complained of insomnia, but he said several times that he would never forget what Ajax was doing on his behalf, and I don't think he ever will. For my part I maintained a strict neutrality. Ethically considered, I was sensible that my brother's actions were open to severe criticism; at the same time, I was certain ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... I shan't sleep at all to-night," said Lola pathetically; "every fifth night I suffer from insomnia, and it's due to-night." ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... to carefully sort out the antiseptic and disinfectants from the drugs themselves. These latter she arranged on a table by themselves—studying the labels—assuring herself of their uses. Quinine for the regular morning and evening doses, sulphonal and trional for insomnia, ether for injections in case of anemia after hemorrhage, morphine for delirium, citrite of caffeine for weakness of the heart, tincture of valerian for the tympanites, bismuth to relieve nausea and vomiting, and the crushed ice wrapped in flannel cloths for ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Lincoln. Dedication of the Church of the Covenant. Growing Insomnia. Resolves to try the Water-cure. Its beneficial Effects. Summer at Newburgh. Reminiscences of an Excursion to Palz Point. Death of her Husband's Mother. Funeral of her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... berth on reaching the station, and while the car remained in the train shed, slept. The departure wakened him, and after useless striving he resigned himself to his insomnia, raised his window curtain, and lay watching the staid procession of Dutch-named towns picketting the river banks. A mimic tempest fretted the Tappan Sea, whose bravado dwindled to mere guerilla marauding in the Highlands, and vanished altogether where the Storm King held ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... you make a study of diseases so rare that nobody has them. Discover a new disease, and save the life of some solitary nigger who brought it to Liverpool, and you'll be a baronet in a fortnight and a member of all the European academies in a month. But study colds, indigestion and insomnia, and change a thousand lives a year from despair to felicity, and no authority will take the slightest notice of you ... As with physical, so with mental diseases—or spiritual, if you like to call them so. You don't suspect that in the common ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... in which I lived alone with a faithful coloured servant by the name of Sawyer, was not a house to which I could think of bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. Being a sufferer from insomnia, I had caused a secret sleeping chamber to be built of stone beneath the foundation, and when even the silence of this retreat failed to bring slumber, I sometimes called in a professional mesmeriser to put me into a hypnotic sleep, from which Sawyer knew how ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... letter from her which much alarmed us. It was written from Naples and dated October 25. John, she said, had been ailing of late with nervousness and insomnia. On Wednesday, two days before the date of her letter, he had suffered all day from a strange restlessness, which increased after they had retired for the evening. He could not sleep and had dressed again, telling her he would walk a little in the night air to ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... "It's this awful insomnia that's doing for me. All my life I've slept so well—till now. And the rheumatic pains; how can the sun—Ruby, sometimes I think it's nothing to do with ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... ours (which is just now suffering from an indigestion and needs a doctor—but having also a complication of insomnia cannot recollect his name) has been multifarious incredibly—but in nothing more than ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... aspect, the breeze was gently moving the leaves. A solemn peace seemed to be spreading itself through space. The houses appeared wrapped in slumber, but behind the closed windows might be surmised the insomnia of the reddened eyes, the sighs from hearts anguished by the threatened danger, the tremulous agility of the hands preparing the war outfit, perhaps the last loving greetings exchanged without pleasure, with ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to me at one time. I was always breaking down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge of doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... his twenty-first year), was born in Paris in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-four. He was the second son in a family of three children. During his babyhood he was very frail; in childhood sickly and weak; and throughout his whole life he suffered much from indigestion and insomnia. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... would have been placidly contented with himself and his achievements. But when he came to a city pulpit he heard the Call of the Modern. The multitudinous life around him must be translated into immediate action. His conscience was not merely awakened: it soon reached a state of persistent insomnia. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... resulted in insomnia, and a fearful heat in the head; for several days he seemed like one stunned, but his youth and health stood him in hand, he rallied, and, undaunted, again sallied forth to the woods with dog and gun. In three years' time ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... sure, I made a wiser choice than did Macbeth, but it was no his fault the advice his lady gied him was bad, and he should no be blamed as sair as he is for the way he followed it. He was punished, tae, before ever Macduff killed him— wasna he a victim of insomnia, and is there anything worse for a man tae ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... is absolutely necessary. In order to discover the cause it is sometimes essential to study the child's whole routine in order to be able to tell exactly just what is causing the apparent insomnia. It may be necessary to change the method of feeding, to regulate the studies and the exercises, and to suggest changes regarding the sanitary and hygienic environment of the child's life. Mothers must be warned against using drugs in the form of soothing syrups ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... sleep at all. For one month after the first snowfall he digs a hole beneath a rock, somewhere above timberline, and falls into a torpor, using no food for thirty days. Then he goes to Washington to meet the Director of Parks, after which he gets no more sleep until next fall. It is this perpetual insomnia which gives a park superintendent his haunted look. He knows he ought not to have killed his teacher, so ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... heard of either suggestion or hypnotism, the Siberian peasants were all the more impressed by his miracles. Before long he decided to make use of his mysterious power on a larger scale, and departed for St. Petersburg, where the news of his exploits had preceded him. The Tsarina, who suffered from insomnia, sent for him, and—thanks also to certain qualities which it is best not to specify—Rasputin's fortune was made ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... never properly appreciate them. By the light of his success, breaking forth like the sun, she feared that the greatest error of her life had been made when she miscomprehended him. In her dreams as well as her insomnia, it was Clemenceau that she beheld, and not the gallants who had flashed across her uneven path, not even the viscount, whose spoil was her nest-egg. Alas! it was a mere atom to the solid ingot which her misunderstood husband's genius ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... this retirement have been spoken of, that there is nothing indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other person. About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic temperament—insomnia—attacked him, and one of the most distressing effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from personal contact with any save a few intimate friends. This peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of sleeping draughts, and in his case ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... both these passages, as in a hundred similar ones, we find Shakespeare himself praising sleep as only those tormented by insomnia can praise it. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... lamp, and smutted first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to rip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high night-tide; and sweat, like the smother of furs in summer; and thirst like ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... that existed between Mr. Britling and Mrs. Britling tended inevitably to make these love affairs troublesome, undignified and futile. Especially when they were viewed from the point of view of insomnia. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... "Sunt geminae Somni portae: quarum altera fertur Cornea; qua veris facilis datur exitus Vmbris: Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto; Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia Manes." VIRG., Aen., vi.—W. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... degrees above the normal, and a feeling of heat. The individual has a high warm color, does not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, is abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from a definite insomnia, is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert, neurotic or high-strung, magnetic, and imaginative are some of the descriptive adjectives applicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... living the everlasting miracle over again. Some of the sufferers were dreaming aloud, giving vent to bursts of laughter which unconscious moans interrupted. Perhaps they beheld the Archangels opening their flesh to wrest their diseases from them. Others, restless with insomnia, turned over and over, stifling their sobs and gazing fixedly into the darkness. And, with a shudder born of all the mystery he had evoked, Pierre, distracted, no longer master of himself in that delirious sphere of fraternal suffering, ended by hating his very ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sleep, we should note the benefit to be derived from regularity in sleep. All Nature seems to move rhythmically and sleep is no exception. Insomnia may be treated by means of habituating one's self to get sleepy at a certain time, and there is no question that the rising process may be made easier if one forms the habit of arising at the same time every morning. To rhythmize ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... are both of a physical and of a psychic character, but the psychic symptoms predominate. There may be headache, capricious appetite, or complete loss of appetite, considerable loss of flesh, or on the contrary very sudden and rapid putting on of fat, great irritability, insomnia, profuse perspiration; hot flashes throughout the body, and particularly in the face, which make the face "blushing" and congested, are particularly frequent. Then the woman's character may be completely ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage Seemed ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... Insomnia compels mortals to learn that neither obliv- [15] ion nor dreams can recuperate the life of man, whose Life is God, for God neither slumbers nor sleeps. The loss of gustatory enjoyment and the ills of indigestion tend to rebuke appetite and destroy the peace of a false sense. False ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... persons over 40, we must eliminate the eye headaches produced by the need of presbyopic glasses or by the need of stronger lenses, as this need is a frequent cause of headache. Dizziness and vertigo may occur without headache, and drowsiness, though not so frequent a symptom as insomnia, often occurs. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... at which I had left my betrothed was a rather early one for a lover, but the fact was no reflection on my devotion. I was a confirmed sufferer from insomnia, and although otherwise perfectly well had been completely fagged out that day, from having slept scarcely at all the two previous nights. Edith knew this and had insisted on sending me home by nine o'clock, with strict orders to ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... which always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... two immense feather pillows lay across its middle. The only place for them seemed to be on his sorely tried stomach or on the floor. In a month an attack of insomnia resulted. For hours at night he lay awake, listening to the frequent rain on the roof or the wind whining Teutonically in ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... knowledge was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr. Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into his confidence, and she—ultimately—took me ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... a bore," said Raffles. "The ladies have been out somewhere—trust them to spoil the show! They would get to bed before the stable folk, but insomnia is the curse of their sex and our profession. Somebody's not home yet; that will be the son of the house; but he's a beauty, who may not come ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... assembled near him, finishing his survey upon Tommy's burning countenance. "Yes—Monck," he said. "He's staying with Barnes at Khanmulla to see this affair through. If I were Mrs. Monck I should be pretty anxious about him. He says it's insomnia." ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... such an essay as this ought really to be superfluous; but its practical justification is found in the silly clamour of those Anglophobes who are unfortunately permitted to reside within our borders. "Insomnia," by Winifred Virginia Jordan, is a remarkable piece of verse whose dark turns of fancy are almost worthy of a Poe. The grotesque tropes, the cleverly distorted images, the bizarre atmosphere, and ingeniously sinister repetitions all unite to produce one of the season's most notable poems. Each of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... strain. This nervous fatigue is not usually conducive to sleep, but a tired condition of the muscles of the body generally, as a result of natural physical activity, is always favorable to sleep. Many who complain of insomnia, therefore, would often be able to remedy their trouble by the simple expedient of a long walk, covering sufficient distance to bring about the physical fatigue which makes sleep possible. Conditions of air, temperature and bed covering are also important factors in connection ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... as he gazed at George's hair and at the revealed sateen back of George's waistcoat, was unusual. Mr. Enwright commonly entered the office full of an intense and aggrieved consciousness of his own existence—of his insomnia, of the reaction upon himself of some client's stupidity, of the necessity of going out again in order to have his chin lacerated by his favourite and hated Albanian barber. But now he had ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of books of a particular and dippable order, such as "Pepys," the "Paston Letters," Burt's "Letters from the Highlands," or the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than any other the Emperor rose often in the night, put on his dressing-gown, and worked in his cabinet: frequently he had insomnia, which he could not overcome; and when the bed at last became unbearable, he sprang from it suddenly, took a book and read, walking back and forth, and when his head was somewhat relieved lay down again. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the most clear and vigorous. I have never in my life prepared sermons a dozen times after my supper. Severe mental work in the evening is apt to destroy sound sleep; thousands of brain workers are wrecked by insomnia. To secure freedom from needless interruption I pinned on my study door "Very Busy." This had the wholesome effect of shutting out all time-killers, and of shortening necessary calls of those who had some important errand. Instead of leaving the selection of my topic to ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust— whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... says that a woman in Milpites, a victim of almost crushing sorrow, despondency, indigestion, insomnia, and kindred ills, determined to throw off the gloom which was making life so heavy a burden to her, and established a rule that she would laugh at least three times a day, whether occasion was presented or not; so she ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... undergraduate students tersely expressed it, "Tennyson soothes our senses: Browning stimulates our thoughts." Poetry is in some ways like medicine. Tennyson quiets the nerves: Browning is a tonic: some have found Thomson's Seasons invaluable for insomnia: the poetry of ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... time before he fell asleep, but he did so at last, for Insomnia is a demon who rarely finds his way into Arcadia. But, all at once, he was awake again,—broad awake, and staring into the dark, for a thousand voices seemed to be screaming in his ears, and eager hands were shaking, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... dreadful, sudden way, then for the first time I felt remorse—horrible remorse, for a while.... I thought he was taken from me by God as a punishment—the one human being I'd ever loved dearly! And I got insomnia, because his spirit seemed to be near, looking at me, knowing everything. But the feeling passed. I suppose I'm not deep enough to feel anything for long. I lived down the remorse. And it was fortunate for ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardly human about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... gesture she pushed these thoughts from her as though they were tangible things. No, no! she would not be beaten! Insomnia, narcotics and stimulants had unnerved her for the time, but she was strong enough to pull herself together and stay the circumstances which threatened to swamp her midway in her career. Bolstered for the moment by this resolve, she threw back her ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... prescience of her fate. She and unhappiness had always seemed so inseparable, that she had never found it difficult to believe that this last misfortune would befall her. She had thought it over, and had decided that it would be unendurable to live any longer, and had borne many a terrible insomnia so that she might collect sufficient chloral to take her out of her misery; and now, as she sat thinking, she remembered that she had never, never been happy. Oh! the miserable evenings she used to spend, when a child, between her father and mother, who could not agree—why, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... satisfied that my telegram would put some insomnia in Ninety-sixth Street when the great work closed for the night at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the protector of the household returned to rest those tired wheels that had been whirring fast in his head since 2 P. M., short-belted to the Smith dynamo ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... I was in bed, the servant brought me a night-lamp with a dial, and I remained alone. Except in France I have never had such a good bed as I had that night. It would have cured the most chronic insomnia, but I was not labouring under such a disease, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Insomnia," said Pearce, huskily. "I can't sleep. Suppose you saw me at work through the window?" There was almost an ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... take a breath; and if we trust him, he is very likely to wake us up at the appointed time in the morning. Also, if we trust him, he carries us off to sleep as though we were babies. Has he not had long practice in the days before insomnia was invented? ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... requires women to sleep on the side, and for some of them this position is awkward at first. Frequently the pressure makes it necessary to get up several times during the night to empty the bladder. In a few cases also the compression of the chest interferes somewhat with breathing. When insomnia is due to the pressure of the womb against neighboring parts of the body, it can be partially counteracted by getting into a comfortable position; but it is also necessary to have the surroundings as conducive to sleep as possible. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... short, healthy life, Enid Crofton had only had one attack of insomnia. During the ten days that had followed her husband's sudden death—for the inquest had had to be put off for a day or two—she had hardly slept at all, and the doctor who had been so kind a friend during that awful time, had had to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... times a day. At night they ask themselves why they can not sleep. They do it so often that it becomes a powerful negative suggestion frequently strong enough to prevent their going to sleep. It is an obsession. Real insomnia exists only in the mind of the sufferer. Every physician, sooner or later, has experience with people who say that they can not sleep. The doctors who give such patients sleeping powders or potions make a grave mistake. These drugs are ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... they'll be much use. Most people will fling the book down with yawns before they're half through the first volume. If I knew a doctor who had many cases of insomnia in hand, I would recommend "Mr Bailey" to him as ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... subject. It was hardly a time to play with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and would pass over his ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... shining through its porcelain shade, gave her a mystic and familiar companionship. Felicie opened her eyes and at a glance drank in the white milky glimmer which brought her peace of mind. Then, closing them once more, she relapsed into the tumultuous weariness of insomnia. Now and again a few words of her part recurred to her memory, words to which she attached no meaning, yet which obsessed her: "Our days are what we make them." And her mind wearied itself by turning over and over some ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... going to bomb them out! The twenty-second was a negro. The twenty-third—! He was a tall, youngish man, narrow-shouldered, rather commonplace-looking, with beautiful blue eyes, and a timid, winning, deprecatory manner. I told him I was suffering from insomnia. After raking over my grandfathers again and bringing the family history down by stages to the very moment I was shown into his office he said he should have to ask me to undergo a thorough physical—! But I was tired of being slapped and punched and breathed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... pressing that the new church was enlarged again, and on September 10, 1871, the Tabernacle was rededicated with impressive services. The sermon was preached by my friend the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D.D. He was a great worker, and suffered, as many of us in the pulpit do, from insomnia. He was the consecrated champion of everything good, a constant sufferer from the lash of active work. He often told me that the only encouragement he had to think he would sleep at night was the fact that he had not slept the night before. Insomnia may be only a big word for those who do not ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... objective realities, tends to make them more realistic. At convenient seasons, bar out the external world, and rivet the mind tenaciously to the loftiest ideals and aspirations, and for the time being forget that you possess a body. Oh, victim of nervous prostration and insomnia, test these principles and see if they are not superior to anodynes, opiates, bromides, and chorals, and be assured that they leave no sting behind. The great boon which they bestow is not limited to nervous and mental disorders; its virtue penetrates ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... every morning, and I as regularly took it off. It has been fully proved since to be as useless an appendage as the vermiform. She had several cups with various concoctions of herbs standing on the chimney-corner, ready for insomnia, colic, indigestion, etc., etc., all of which were spirited away when she was at her dinner. In vain I told her we were homeopathists, and afraid of everything in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms lower than the two-hundredth dilution. I tried to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... pathological condition, agrypnia is of such frequent occurrence, and so detrimental to the general health, that it appears to me to merit special consideration. This holds good especially in this connection, because, even where electric baths fail to influence the disease giving rise to the insomnia, they almost invariably remove this, irrespective of its cause. Even where, the disease itself remaining uncured, the insomnia must return sooner or later, the sleep is very much improved while the baths are being had recourse to. We must of course endeavor ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... Insight elsciado. Insignificant sensignifa. Insincere nesincera. Insinuate proponeti. Insipid sengusta. Insist insisti. Insnare allogi, kapti. Insobriety malsobreco. Insolent insultema. Insoluble nesolvebla. Insolvent nepagokapabla. Insomnia sendormo. Insomuch tial ke. Inspect ekzameni. Inspector inspektoro. Inspiration inspiro. Inspiration (breath) enspiro. Inspire enspiri. Inspire inspiri. Instalment partpago. Install logxigi. Instance ekzemplodoni. Instance ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Aunt Jerusha the credit of saying at this point that her method of putting me to sleep was efficacious. I do not ever remember having retained consciousness past the third paragraph of her remedy for insomnia. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... the fragile figure of her father, in soft felt-hat and black coat, creeping almost noiselessly past the window. He had been out for one of his nocturnal walks, for he sometimes went out alone when suffering from insomnia. He had ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... other!" she cried out in a low, passionate voice. "It seemed as though everything that meant anything had gone out of my life. I became worn out, nervous; and though the days were bad enough, the nights were a source of dread. I began to suffer from insomnia—I could not sleep. This was even before my supposed uncle came. I used to read for hours and hours in my room after I had gone to bed. But"—she flung out her hand with an impatient gesture—"there is no need to dwell on that. One night, about a week after that man had ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... "is Miss Wildmere so bad as that? Poor, pale victim of insomnia! By the way, do you and Mr. Arnault keep a ledger account of the time you receive? or do you roughly go on the principle of 'share and share alike'?" and with eyes flashing back laughter at his reddening face, she ran up the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... distance, out of the range of the wordy shrapnel, the literary scrimmage is amusing. "Gulliver's Travels" made many a heart ache, but it only gladdens ours. Pope's "Dunciad" sent shivers of fear down the spine of all artistic England, but we read it for the rhyme, and insomnia. Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" gave back to the critics what they had given out—to their great surprise and indignation, and our amusement. Keats died from the stab of a pen, they say, and whether 't was true or not we know that now a suit of Cheviot ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... superficial and devoid of vigour, as the spleen must be affected injuriously by the liver. The weak action of the heart, and its febrile state, should be the natural causes which conduce to the present irregularity in the catamenia, and insomnia at night; the poverty of blood in the liver, and the sluggish condition of that organ must necessarily produce pain in the ribs; while the overdue of the catamenia, the cardiac fever, and debility of the respiration of the lungs, should occasion ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... there, absorbed as after an unhealthy insomnia, when Warcolier entered, ever serious, with his splendid, redundant phrases and his usual attitude of a pedantic rhetor. He came to inform the minister that a matter of importance, perhaps of a troublesome nature, loomed on the horizon. Granet was preparing an interpellation. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... race downstairs as soon as he was out of ear-shot, he was mistaken, for I hit the sack like the proverbial ton of crushed mortar. It had been literally weeks since I'd had a pleasant, restful sleep that was not broken by fitful dreams and worry-insomnia. Now that we had something solid to work on, I could look forward to some concrete action instead of merely ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... of sleeplessness may be materially shortened and that the sleep which follows the practice of the exercises is better, sounder, and more refreshing, than the sleep that came before. In many cases a long or short period of insomnia can be absolutely prevented by just these ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... tongues at banquets, in conversation, in the confessional, in sermons, in lectures, at court, in vehicles and ships. The minor enemies, like troublesome vermin, drive him to weariness of life, or to death by insomnia. He compares his tortures to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows. But his is worse, for there is no end to it. For years he has daily been dying a thousand deaths and that alone; for his friends, if such there are, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... I asked, because I had heard several dodges for getting rid of insomnia, and I should like to have done ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... understood now the emotion of the general's friends when Natacha had sung in her low, sweet voice, "Good-night. May your eyes have rest from tears and calm re-enter your heart oppressed." The friends had certainly been made aware, by Matrena's anxious talking, of the general's insomnia, and they could not repress their tears as they listened to the poetic wish of charming Natacha. "All the same," thought Rouletabille, "no one could imagine what I have just seen. They are not dead for everyone in the world, the youths of Moscow, and every night ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... from which I now suffered were insomnia, melancholia, heart irregularity, and a train of mental symptoms and feelings which common words could not begin to describe. It would have required an assortment of the very strongest adjectives and adverbs to have told any one how ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... who reposed in an adjoining room, would enter softly at nine in the morning, draw up the blinds, and deposit a cup of tea at the bedside of her mistress. Up to that moment, she would slumber like a child. Rarely did she suffer from insomnia or nightmare. On this particular night, however, her rest was troubled by a strange ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... remembered what a fine fellow Lawson had been, what good times we had had together. I remembered especially that evening when we had found this valley and given rein to our fancies. What horrid alchemy in the place had turned a gentleman into a brute? I thought of drink and drugs and madness and insomnia, but I could fit none of them into my conception of my friend. I did not consciously rescind my resolve to depart, but I had a notion that I ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... bed. She was very tired. She ought to go. Yet now she suddenly felt reluctant to go, and as if the doings of the day for her were not yet over. And, besides, she was not going to sleep well. That was certain. The dry, the almost sandy sensation of insomnia was upon her. What was the matter with Gaspare to-night? Perhaps he had had a quarrel with some one at Mergellina. He had a strong temper as ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... exaltation, constant over-excitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and single-mindedness of purpose constrained and ruled by a fixed idea. In addition to this, he displays the usual physical symptoms, such as insomnia, a pallid complexion, hot-headed, foulness of dress and person,[3101] with, during the last five months of his life, rashes and itching all over his body.[3102] Issuing from ill-matched stock, born ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... groped his way along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her breathe—the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in the lock ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... uncertain age. When you are thinking of the "white porch of your home," she will tell you she "didn't sleep a wink last night!" that "the eggs on this steamer are not what they ought to be," that the cook doesn't know how to boil them, and that as her husband is troubled with insomnia her son is quite likely to run down from the harbor to meet her at the landing two months hence. Then she will turn to the query by asking if you think the captain is a fit man to run this steamer; if the purser would be likely to change a sovereign for her; ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... (Books) "highly recommended for insomnia; friends we never speak to, and always cut if we want to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the case of a person suffering from insomnia. If he does not make any effort to sleep, he will lie quietly in bed. If on the contrary he tries to force himself to sleep by his will, the more efforts he makes, the more ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... trouble had taken the turn of insomnia—-that bugbear of physician and patient alike—and while the others had their night hours filled with dreams, or half-dreams, of pleasant anticipation, poor Jack ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... moment. Yes—the idea was a good one. She would be only fifteen years old by this time, and must certainly have changed to an extent of which he was at his age incapable. Besides, she had been asleep, and nervous insomnia could not be responsible for retarding the evidences of youth in her case. His agony of dread lest this great experiment ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of indigestion, insomnia, and fits of black impatience with myself and others,—self chiefly.... I am heartily sick of my ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... the matter with her, although her health of late had been far from good. I happened to be staying in the house just then, and found, that for some reason or other, I could not sleep. I do not often suffer from insomnia, so that the occurrence struck me as somewhat extraordinary. My bedroom opened on to a large, dark landing. In one corner of it stood a very old grandfather's clock, the ticking of which I could distinctly hear when ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the last on her fading consciousness. But this mother was not the Daisy of the plains nor of the daguerreotype. They had been before Saxon's time. This that she saw nightly was an older mother, broken with insomnia and brave with sorrow, who crept, always crept, a pale, frail creature, gentle and unfaltering, dying from lack of sleep, living by will, and by will refraining from going mad, who, nevertheless, could not will sleep, and ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... lay quite still, with her eyes wide open, seeing the questions go round like the hands of a clock; the very words sounded as loud and distinct in her brain as the ticking of a clock. Her nerves were shattered, and life grew terribly distinct in the insomnia of the hot summer night. ... She threw herself over and over in her burning bed until at last her soul cried out of its lucid misery: 'Give me a passion for God or man, but give me a passion. I cannot ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... are dealing with conditions of sleep and dream which are in the least diseased, i. e., abnormally intense sleepiness, sleep-walking, hallucinatory dreams, etc., but also when the physiological side of sleep and dream are in question, e. g., the need of sleep, the effect of insomnia, of normal sleepiness, etc. The criminalist must study also these things in order to know the kind of situation he is facing and when he is to call in the physician for assistance. Ignorance of the matter means spoiling a case by unskilful interrogation and neglect of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... carried away, the little bureaucrat found himself part of it all and without fury or futile violence he felt only a calm strength. All was "well" with him, well in mind, well in body. He had no more insomnia, and for the first time in years his stomach gave him no trouble—because he had forgotten all about it. He even got through the winter without taking cold—something that had never been heard of before. He ceased to find fault with ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... "I cannot understand, John; it is absurd to say that you cannot sleep on a feather-bed. Mr Hare told me you complained of insomnia, and there is no surer way of losing your health. It is owing to the hardness of those college mattresses, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... hard set, and there were lines in his face which time might have drawn twenty or thirty years later. His lips made a straight line, and his eyes, although he had hardly slept three hours a night for as many nights, had a look in them that was not to be accounted for by ordinary insomnia. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... Constantius, and smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after defeat in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during nights of insomnia, the emperor blamed himself for having ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... he was in constant rebellion against established precedent, constantly called below to be lectured by The Roman. In revenge for which at night he made the life of Mr. Bundy one of constant insomnia, and, by soaping the stairs or strewing tacks in the hall, seriously interfered with that inexperienced ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... air of repose about it when we arrived. Before we had been in residence twenty-four hours most of the repose had vanished 'like a dutiful bream,' as Adrian expressed it. However, nothing unduly outrageous happened till last night, when Adrian had a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor. He transferred the bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom door, which happened to be that of Frau Hoftath Schilling, and this morning from seven o'clock onwards ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... seven days in which to make complete her reconciliation with her former friends who now ruled Paris and France with a relentless and perpetually bloodstained hand. No wonder that during the night which followed the receipt of this momentous document, Demoiselle Candeille suffered gravely from insomnia. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the size of the primary growth. The disease tends to spread locally, causing increasing difficulty in swallowing and breathing. The patient gradually loses strength, and may die from exhaustion induced by pain and insomnia, from haemorrhage, or from ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... she had overslept more than an hour. Indeed, she had had the first sound and prolonged sleep that had come to her since the honeymoon began; for until then she had slept alone all her life and the new order had almost given her chronic insomnia. She rang for her maid and began to dress. The maid did not come. She rang again and again; apparently the bell was broken. She finished dressing and went out into the huge, grandly and gaudily furnished salon. Harding was at a carved old-gold ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... of late, since it had been borne in upon even their limited intelligence that nothing remotely resembling an attempt to smuggle anything ashore had ever been made; still, it would be awkward in the extreme if one or more of them should happen to be troubled with insomnia on that particular night, and elect to pass the sleepless hours on deck: but Don Hermoso might be trusted to attend to that matter when he should arrive on board about four o'clock, or a little after, as he did, accompanied by Senora Montijo ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... storytellers live like other people (only more purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system of illumination also—we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life by it (through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that notwithstanding his mind was so occupied, when awake, with the creatures of his imagination, he never dreamt of them; which I think is also the general experience. But he does not tell us for how many hours before he went to sleep, and tossed upon ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... was on his feet again, that his life was wrecked for ever. He did suffer from insomnia, even with his splendid sea-seasoned constitution, for months, which proved the poignant insistency of his grief, making thinking a disease instead of a healthy function. He performed his duties mechanically, rigidly, like an engine stoked from the outside. He no longer had pleasure or interest ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... immediately practical point of view we should not ignore the possible value of music in some states of disease. In melancholia and hysteria it is probably capable of being used with benefit, and it is worth bearing in mind in dealing with insomnia. Classical scholars will not forget that the singing of birds was tried as a remedy to overcome the insomnia of Maecenas. Music is certainly a good antidote to the pernicious habit of introspection and self-analysis, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... generally thin and pale, with a peculiar sallow, or yellowish-green color to the skin which has given rise to the term "green-sickness," or "Chlorosis." They fall easy victims to scrofula, consumption, nervous prostration, insomnia, and other diseases. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... he resigned, owing to ill-health, with a pension of L120. After his retirement he spent a nomadic life wandering from Nice to Venice, and from the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of health and sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, still preaching in the desert, still plunging deeper and deeper into solitude. And as the world refused to listen to him, Nietzsche became more and more convinced of the value of his message. His last book, "Ecce Homo," an autobiography, contains all the premonitory symptoms ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... the day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... was cooking up my attack of insomnia I went out in the smoking-room to drown my sorrow, but I found such a bunch of sorrow killers out there ahead of me that I had to hold the comb and brush in my lap and sit up on the towel rack while ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... ever undressed on such occasions, knowing, as he no doubt did, perfectly well what his program for the night would be. She had decided that the nocturnal excursions were not due to insomnia but were carefully planned to avoid possible observation. When all the countryside was wrapped in slumber the old gentleman stole from his cottage and went—where? Doubtless to some secret place ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... waking up; rather we suffer from insomnia, with all its results of fear and exaggeration and frightful waking dreams. The modern mind is not a donkey which wants kicking to make it go on. The modern mind is more like a motor-car on a lonely road which two amateur ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... evening or the coffee I had drunk, in any case I was not sleepy. I turned in, only to lie for an hour or more with my eyes wide open staring at a patch of moonlight on the ceiling. My old trouble of insomnia had overtaken me again. I finally rose and paced the floor in sheer desperation, and then paused to stare out of the window at the peaceful moonlit ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... through the Bloody Sixth, and by the time it had travelled the length of Mulberry Street had acquired a local standing and the right to be counted and rounded up by the political bosses. Now the old houses were filled with newspaper offices and given over to perpetual insomnia. Week-days and Sundays, night or day, they never slept. Police headquarters was right across the way, and kept the reporters awake. From his window the chief looked down the narrow passageway to the bottom of the alley, and the alley looked back at him, nothing ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... herself, sleep would be impossible until Isabel returned. She hoped that Aunt Francesca would not want her to read aloud, but, as it chanced, she did. However, the chosen book was of the sort which banishes insomnia, and, in less than an hour, Madame was sound asleep, with Mr. Boffin purring in his luxurious silk-lined basket at ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... as the instant skin rash or stuffy nose or swollen glands or sticky eyes. that people usually think of when they think "allergic reaction." Food allergies can cause many kinds of symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, from hyperactivity to depression, insomnia to narcolepsy—and commonly the symptoms don't manifest immediately after eating. Frequently, allergic reactions are so low grade as to be unnoticeable and may not produce an observable condition until many years of their grinding down the vital force ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... get over was insomnia. I could never sleep at the right time and I was always dead tired on duty. Once I worked forty-three hours at a stretch and after that I had to do a guard in our trench. I felt sleepy all of a sudden. I pinched myself and banged the butt of my rifle on my toes, but everything ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... MUSIC.—I recently noticed a paragraph in a Medical Journal advising persons suffering from Insomnia to try a musical box in their bed-rooms; and I therefore purchased a rather expensive one, which plays six tunes, with drum and trumpet accompaniment. Something seems to have gone wrong with the mechanism, as, after being fully wound ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... and my head, and insomnia, and weakness, a general collapse all along the line, the doctor tells me. 'Over-cerebration,' he says; 'over-excitement.' I fancy I rather ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... this period suffer largely from despondency, insomnia, and a feeling of martyrdom. Like the Positive type of the same Mount, they are also much inclined towards rheumatism and disorders brought ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... it?" railed Kate. "Isn't poor Nora permitted to cough, if she is disposed to cough? She's in there doing the room for me. I'm going to try sleeping in there—isn't insomnia a fearful thing? But the fussiness ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... than I was, though I am still tussling with insomnia. My crazy nerves play me all sorts of tricks, but praise be I have stopped worrying. I have come at last to see that God has found even a small broken instrument like myself worth working through, and I just lift up my heart to Him every day, battered ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Metropolitan and Flatiron buildings shone an isolated and belated window light. At the Garden a Wild West show with rings and side performances had long ago disgorged its crowds and quieted its pandemonium of brass bands. Len Haswell had been walking with the aimlessness of insomnia, and asking himself over and over one question: "What changed it all?" In answer he accused himself and argued the case for the woman without whom he was too lonely to go home and face ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... pull himself together and get a firmer grasp of things than he had at present! The commercial instinct was strong within him, and he had a genius for figures, but insomnia and the state of his nerves seemed to have deprived him of half his powers. He envied his wife her gentle breathing and her deep sleep; and he would often wake her in the night when he was most restless, and demand something at her hands—a very weak cup of tea, or a little milk and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... night he had had to stay awake and watch so as not to be set upon and killed. He had been back in England a short time and had completely recovered from the privations and sufferings he had experienced, but he suffered desperately from insomnia. On his return he had slept well, but a month before his sleep had suddenly begun ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... his nerves went to pieces, he suffered from insomnia and did his work badly. He consulted a doctor. The prescription cost him three crowns; and such a prescription! He was to stop working; he had worked too hard, his brain was overtaxed. To stop work would mean starvation for all of them, and to work ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... literary and neighboring friends, until the winter of 1615 and 1616, when a severe throat trouble afflicted the Bard, in conjunction with acute pains in the head, that prevented the solace of sleep, and which turned into chronic insomnia. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... if anyone cared for them, they would eat without waking, but some also were neglected, and these would die directly through lack of sustenance. But those who were seized with delirium suffered from insomnia and were victims of a distorted imagination; for they suspected that men were coming upon them to destroy them, and they would become excited and rush off in flight, crying out at the top of their voices. And those who were attending ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... days with an obscure disorder of the brain, aggravated by the hardships of his Oregon Trail journey, and by ill-considered efforts to harden his bodily frame by over-exertion. His disease took many forms—insomnia, arthritis, weakness of sight, incapacity for sustained thought. His biographer Farnham says that "he never saw a perfectly well day during his entire literary career." Even when aided by secretaries and copyists, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Aunt William woke up at half-past seven, and complained to her maid that she had had insomnia for twenty minutes. Having glanced at the enlarged and coloured photograph of the late William that decorated every room, she ordered a luncheon of roast mutton and rice pudding, rhubarb tart and cream, almonds and raisins, and oranges, thinking that this menu ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... troubled with insomnia, or wakefulness or disturbing dreams, have been enabled to secure sound sleep by merely relaxing the muscles and repeating mechanically, without effort at anything more, some formula descriptive of what is desired. The main point is that attention should fix upon the appropriate organizing ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... or three nights. All through my trial and in Barlinney I had been playing a part. When the occasion demanded I could be as cool as I was with Captain Robinson. But that was a strain and it took it out of me. During these following days I was nervous; I had insomnia; I paced my cell at night. The feeling of a jail ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... thought of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete there is also a cure for insomnia. For two awful years, I suffered from insomnia. Night after night I would go to bed apparently almost dead for sleep; it seemed as though I must sleep, but I could not sleep; oh, the agony of those two years! It seemed as if I would lose my mind if ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... little of it on a threadbare coat, a worn muffler, or coarse gloves rubbing against each other. It drenches the shivering blouses, the waterproofs thrown over working dresses; it blends with all the breaths, hot with insomnia or alcohol, buries itself in the depths of empty stomachs, penetrates the shops which are just opening their doors, dark courtyards, staircases, where it stands on the balusters and walls, and fireless garrets. That is why so ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout stream between its sedgy ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere?"—all are closely scanned and noted, as they mount or descend Strood Hill in perennial procession. Dickens was himself a sturdy and inveterate pedestrian. When he suffered from insomnia he would think nothing of rising in the middle of the night and taking a ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... were sound asleep, they were soaking the old man's feet or tucking up the covers around the invalid mother. While other maidens were in the cotillon, they were dancing attendance upon rheumatism and spreading plasters for the lame back of the septuagenarian, and heating catnip tea for insomnia. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... machinery of the story can be lightly passed over. It is intended simply as the sugar that lures the random bee. The hero, living in Boston in 1887, is supposed to fall asleep in a deep, underground chamber which he has made for himself as a remedy against a harassing insomnia. Unknown to the sleeper the house above his retreat is burned down. He remains in a trance for a hundred and thirteen years and awakes to find himself in the Boston of the year 2000 A. D. Kind hands remove him from ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... thing is the great social distinction here. The poor man who sleeps in a stone niche near the roof, and who is constantly elbowed and hustled out of his bed by earnest and restless vermin with a tendency toward insomnia, is harassed by meeting in the court-yard and corridors the paying boarders who wear good clothes, live well, have their cigars, brandy and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... hostile criticisms. The painter naturally persevered in his own course. After getting into a violent passion at her silliness, he said to himself that, after all, perhaps she was right. Then began the era of doubts, twinges of reflection which brought about cramps in the stomach, insomnia, feverishness and disgust with himself. He had the courage to make some retouchings, but without much heart, and with a feeling that ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... went to bed late that night, his ears tingling with the adulation of the multitude, and in his excited insomnia understanding for the first time in his life the words: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." He realized more fully now that his shipmaster days had given him a taste for command, and that he had come into his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... few moments. One is not very ready to prescribe sleeping draughts for unknown patients, but still, insomnia is a very distressing condition. In the end, I temporised with a moderate dose of bromide, deciding to call and see if more energetic measures ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... like an electrified magnet. To wander about freely in that roomy sympathy of hers seemed to him to be the supreme reward of experience. It seemed like the good inn after the bleak high-road, the oasis after the sandstorm, shade after glare, the dressing after the wound, sleep after insomnia, surcease from unspeakable torture. He wanted, in a word, to tell her everything, because she would not demand any difficult explanations. She had given him an opening, in her mention of savings. In reply to her suggestion, "You must ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn't anything to speak of, and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry |
