ASLEEP FOR CENTURIES.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 655, 31 March 1870, Page 4

ASLEEP FOR CENTURIES.

[DAILY TELEGRAPH,] "My blessing," Sancho Panza cried, "on tho man who first invented sleep ! it covers one up like a cloak." What benedictions would not the grateful squire have invoked upon Dp Qrqsselbach, Professor at the University of Upsal, in Sweden, who, by his own account, has amended the invention, and put it in the power of anybody to slumber as long and soundly as may be wished. Nature's restorer at present is a fleeting luxury, v.iryingr i n duration from the ■' forty winks" hastily and uneasily snatched, to the refreshing "snooze," the good "nap," the "long, sound sleep" of the h-3altny fatigue, and the protracted slumber of over- weariness or narcotics. But whether it be the brief indulgence after dinner, the nightly rest, or the troubled trance produced by dru^s, we wake up from these intervals of quiet after a few hours a,t the most, and then we must face the toils and qar-es of existence till nightcaps and pillows come round again. Professor Grusselbach offers to humanity the boon of a sleep, limited by nothing but the caprice of the sleeper, Dp affairs go badly with you ? Are you disgusted with the nineteenth century, and with yourself \ Would, it be convenient for you to tf turn in" for a few lustra, or a few centuries ? Have you, like Bottom, a groat "exposition of slumber come upon you?" Repair, then to the Professor, who will put you to bed, and tuck you up snugly and safely in a state of unconsciousness which can be prolonged to any date you like to mention. Posterity will knock at your door, and bring your slaving- water, either in twenty years, in ao inauy decades, or centuries, as your case may render desirable. The learned Doctor having taken your instructions in regard to this same re-awakeningr, will administer a little dose, the composition of which is his own secret; and " not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the East" can equal the effects of that amazing physic. You I will gradually turn benumbed and brittle, so that, if it were dropped, the body would fly to pieces like a China figure ; yet you would not be dead, but merely dormant— suspended between death and life— unconscious, calm, and frje from your gout, your mnthefiin-law, your bills falling due, or whatever else marie the spirit sad and weary. You need no longir erivy the happy door-mouse or sagacious bear, which snore away the miseries of a northern winter. Drink of the Professor's draught, having first carefully provided that he does not crack or fracture your slumbering limbs, and having also named the day on which you will return and see " how the world wags ;" and upon which day, if all goes well, and Dr. Grusselbach be as good as his word, he will sprinkle over you "a stimulating fluid," at the contact of which you will relax, you will stretch, yawn, rub your eyes, and recover active animation — older in point of time by the period of your slumber, but not aged in physical condition beyond the moment when you took the sleepirg potion. Younger on the contrary, will you arise by all the gl««riou3 strensjth. and restora ion of thit ere unless and steady bout of si qj. What could be more fascinating in promise than the Professor's offer, — although there is, without doubt, an element of uneasiness in the chance of being broken into litble piece 3, or mislaid, or ovrtvlooke.l when the day came round —& risk even of surviving the excellent Professor, or worst of all, of having that " stimul iting fluid" poured in vain upon the too-confiding form, which in such a case must slumber on to the crack of d( o n ? But the world will burn to know how Professor GrusFelbach came by his discovery. It must be understood, then, that among the mummies exhumed in Ej.ypt, the learned have long marvelle.l 'to find some of thesa ancient ladies and gentlemen complete in all the interior organs of life, albeit' dry and yellow ; while others were 1 what cooks call "drawn," that is to say, devoid of all "insides." The proportion of the first cl;is3 wa3 small, but jet well-marked ; and the problem has long been "what could it mean ? " Tl c poorer Egyptians, Herodotus tells us, used to be salted down without much previous embalming ; but nui m mies of the kind in question are found in very expensive cases ; so that these pccul'ar examples coull not be pickled proletarians of the Nile— merely sardines of the ' State, not worth disembowelling. There was another meaning in these things, and our Doctor says he has found it out. He has come to the conclusion, that among the secrets known to the "wisdom of the Egyptians " was one which taught them how to suspend animation in the living body, and to restore it after a lap3e of years ; where- i tore he regards the perfectly-preserved mummies as those of individuals who submitted to the process, and were afterwards, either by wilful neglect, inadvertence, or the loss of the' necessary knowledge, left in their unbroken trance. Whenever we find the usual specimen, neatly done up in bitumen arid linen, with its intestines laid in the four little chests, beariug the colors of Amset' Hapi, Tuautmut and Kahhsenuf, and a scaraboerus deposited in its stomrcli, there can, of course, be no doubt. The antique personage under examination d ed and was duly embalmed, after the examination of Osiris, and he has been for three thousand odd years awaiting the return of his spirit to the flesh. But wherever a complete Egyptian is discovered, we must jrictureto ourselves a very different transaction. Here was some learned .priest, or deep-read sage — some powerful prince or wealthy merchant—who was aware of the profound secret, or who was able to profit by it. Either he had been crossed in love for some dark-oyed daughter of Nile ; or had lost; a contract' for a pyramid, and w#s 0 msequently melancholy ; had fallen out of favor with Pharaoh ; liad made a pro- j dqious astronomical calculation^ and wanted to live to see the verification of it : had lost his eldest-born son through . tho tenth plague of Egypt, and his'paternal sorrow sought the calm of the grave without its irrecovable conditions ; had been an enthusiastic i a chemical science, yet sick of a troublesome disease ; or was merely a sleep-loving fellow, with.a curiosity to know what the world would be like a thousand years after Rameses 111. Such a one would coino to the Grusselbacha of the period, and, having entered His name in " the book of the priests of Horns, God of Slumber," with the date of hia desired return to (his life, he would pay his fee in currency of Thebes or On, inul drink his dose : after which they

would lay him by, duly labelled and scheduled, some thing after the fashion, only in a subMer and sublimer way, of provincial bakers, who chalk upon the pavement for the direction of the policeman, " Call at 4." But all this, it will be objected, is mere theory, Well, the Professor has been at the subject for 15 years, and he declares that he has much more than theory fur the support of his view. Among other experimental animals, it is said that he possesses a snake, wl.i.h. he has successively benumbed and restored to life by those potions to which we have referred—^keeping it sometimes one year and sometimes several years in the condition of suspended animation, but never as yet failing to revivify it by h*s stimulating fluid." So confident is the Swedish Professor of his method that he has petitioned the Stockholm Government to make over to him the next murderer condemned to death. If the authorities permit, he engages to treat this experimental malefactor in the same manner as the snake, and to restore him to existence at the end of two years, when it is proposed that the man's life shall be spared.