Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1912 — Man’s Nerves [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Man’s Nerves

Many Unable to Sleep Owing to Noises

By J. CAREY LEWIS. London

HEX a tradesman was arraigned recently at a London (England) court on a charge of having attempted to commit suicide, it was pleaded in his behalf that he had suffered from insomnia brought on by the noise made at night by the motor omnibuses and trams which passed the premises at which he resided, and he stated himself that he had been unable to sleep owing to the traffic. This was an extreme case, perhaps, and possibly this particular victim of street noises was a man of abnormally nervous temperament.

But no man’s nerves are entirely proof against the sapping influence of disturbed and interrupted sleep, and, unhappily, cause and effect in tMs case are apt to react and intensify each other. The nervous fear of not being able to sleep is often enough the primary cause of sleeplessness, and thus.an. irregular series of intermittent noises tends to induce, especially in a sleeper awakened by them, a state of nervous apprehension which may lead in the end to severe and pronounced insomnia. This is a serious matter, not merely for bad sleepers themselves, but for all who have to depend pn their services. Xo man can do his work efficiently by day if he cannot sleep at night, and when public servants like* Sir Henry Morris and other of our correspondents tell us how great and growing the evil is, it is high time for the community at large* to bestir

itself and insist on a remedy being found and applied, says the London Times. «Of course the traffic of a great city can never be entirely stilled. There must always be occasional passings even in the quietest streets. These we must put up with as best we may, as we must also with the continuous roar of the great thoroughfares up to a late hour of the night. But these are not the enemies of sleep of which Sir Henry Morris specially complains. It is the multiplication of the motor car and the heedless sounding of its raucous horn in the small hours that justly provoke his indignation and remonstrance.