MAN WHO WILL NOT WAKE UP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1118, 5 July 1913, Page 4

MAN WHO WILL NOT WAKE UP.

strangk hospital case.

la a hospital at Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, there is a patient between forty and fifty years of age, the son of a Derbyshire Magistrate, who, is sound asleep, and cannot be awakened. He has suffered from sleeping fits for some considerable time, and last Easter, after engaging a n»m in a private house for two nights,

he retired to rest, and slept for a week. When he awoke, he resumed his journey, and the next that was heard of him was that he had been found asleep on the roadside. Medical men have now been exercising all their skill and ingenuity to awaken him, but in vain. MEDICAL RECORDS. Medical records contain the accounts of many similar cases. Caroline Olsson, a native of Okua, a small island off the coast of Sweden, in 1875, when fourteen years of age, on returning home from school one day, camplained of toothache. She was put to bed by her mother, and fell into profound sleep, which lasted for thirty - two years. Although pricked with pins, she appeared to experience no pain, or even consciousness of the attempts made to awaken her. Towards the end of 1908, when at the age of forty-six, she suddenly awoke. During the whole of that time her sole nourishment is said to have consisted of two cups of milk a day, which were given to her by her attendants. The case was afterwards investigated by Dr. Froderstrom, of the Salpitriere; in Paris, and her complaint was diagonised as catatonic stupor.

Margaret Lvall, of Denniland, in the parish of Maryton, near to Montrose, slept for two days from June 12th, 1812, and again from July Ist to August Bth, of the same year. During her sleep she was blistered, bled and immersed in cold water. Needles were thrust under her flesh, and pieces of burnt rag were applied to her nose, and pins placed under her finger nails. She was even whipped, but.nothing could awaken her. A German Government official named Arnheim had an accident in 1904, and slept for over four years, although every effort was made to awaken him. PREACHING IN HIS SI.EEP. Simeon Watson, a hard-work-ing industrious man, aged about thirty, of athletic habits and active temperament, about 1826, began preaching in his sleep. His trance or sleeping fit invariably lasted as long as the ordinary Noncomformist service which he was in the habit of attending. The attacks became more frequent as time progressed, and he would go through the ordinary chapel service, praying, reading the Bible aud preaching. In 1816, a child seven months old, at Pennington, near Lymington, slept for three weeks from February 17th, after a dose of ordinary medicine had been administered by her mother. Classical writers tell the story of the Seven Sleepers—Maximianus, Malchus, Martinianus, Dionysius, Joannes, Serapion and Constantins —who, to avoid the prosecution under the Emperor Decius, hid themselves in a cave in the mountain Caelins, and there slept for 196 years. They then went into the city, thinking they had slept but for one night though the truth was soon discovered by their different habits aud speech, aud from the money they had about them, which was an antiquated stamp and feature.