e treatment of all these symptoms calls for much insight. The
child's confidence must be completely secured, and he must be
encouraged to tell of all his sensations and of the reasons which
prompt his actions. The nervous child has a horror of appearing unlike
other children, and will suffer in silence. If his troubles are
brought into the light of day with kindness and sympathy they will
melt before his eyes. Even night-terrors are, as a rule, determined by
the suppressed fears of his waking hours. If they are provoked by his
experiences at school, by the fear of punishment or by dismay at a
task that has proved beyond his powers, he should be taken away from
school for the time being. Night-terrors are said to be aggravated by
nasal obstruction due to adenoid vegetations. Clothing at night should
be light and porous, and particular attention should be paid to the
need for free ventilation.

We have spoken in an earlier chapter of the trouble sometimes
experienced in inducing a nervous child to go to sleep. In older
children insomnia is common enough. Even when sleep comes it may be
light and broken, as though the child slept just below the surface of
consciousness and did not descend into the depths of sound and
tranquil slumber. We have often noticed how different is the estimate
of the patient from that of the nurse as to the number of hours of
sleep during the night. The sick man maintains that he has hardly
slept at all, whilst the nurse, drawing us aside, whispers in our ear
that he has slept most of the night. In estimating sleep we have to
consider not only its duration, but also its depth, and the patient
who denies that he has slept at all has lain perhaps half the night
with an active restless brain betwixt sleep and wakefulness. Often
enough when he comes to consider in the morning the problems that
vexed his soul at midnight, he is quite unable to recall their nature,
and recognises them as the airy stuff that dreams are made of.
Although in a sense asleep he may have retained a half-consciousness
of his surroundings and a sense of despair at the continued absence of
a sounder sleep.

With nervous children we are apt to find sleep which is of little
depth and which constantly shows evidence of a too-active brain. The
body is tossed to and fro, words are muttered, and the respiration is
hurried and with a change in rhythm, because there is no depth of
anaesthesia. The body still responds to the impulses o