Most asylum physicians admit that in acutely excited cases in whom the ordinary means of inducing sleep, viz., out-door exercise and liberal diet, fail, sleep should be induced by some medical agent, in case the continued excitement may prove too much for the patient, and that in cases of mild melancholia and nervous irritability, where insomnia has been and is the most prominent symptom, that some sleep-causing medicine should be given. As to the medicine, the preparations of opium and the tincture of hyoscyamus long reigned supreme, for some time bromide of potassium was much extolled for its sedative and soporific properties, and latterly chloral has totally eclipsed every other sedative or hypnotic.