Can speech be restored after lethargic sleep? Imaginary death: what is lethargic sleep

Lethargy is the body's defensive response to danger, genetically programmed and going back to ancient forms of dormancy.

Many cases of lethargic sleep have resulted from or were associated with life-threatening circumstances.

Suddenly falling into a dream, a person is saved from the cruel reality in the literal sense, but he himself does not realize it.

Lethargy in brief

Causes of an attack various factors can act:

• severe nervous stress,
• fainting,
• hysterical shock
• waste, etc.

Sleep duration can be different: several hours or tens of years.

The lethargic dream of our compatriot Nadezhda Lebedina was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. Nadezhda fell asleep in 1954 after a serious quarrel with her husband, and woke up 20 years later, and was absolutely healthy.

Hysterical lethargy or hibernation is what modern medicine calls this phenomenon.

And hysterical lethargy have nothing in common.

An electroencephalogram showed that during an attack, the patient sleeps for some time in real sleep, this form of sleep was called "sleep within sleep."

The electroencephalograph records the work of the brain, corresponding to the waking state, the brain reacts to external stimuli, but the sleeper does not wake up.

It is impossible to forcibly withdraw from an attack of lethargy, it ends as suddenly as it begins.

Sometimes the attack can be repeated several times.

In this case, the patient feels his approach by characteristic signs. Since an attack is always caused by a strong emotional stress or a nervous shock, the autonomic nervous system reacts to it in the first place:

• headaches
• loss of strength
• increased blood pressure and body temperature,
• increased heart rate,
• increased sweating.

The person feels like during hard physical work.

The mental trauma that causes an attack of lethargy can be very severe or very minor: people prone to hysteria, even little troubleseem to be the end of the world.

Patients unconsciously fall asleepdisconnecting from the outside world with its problems.

There was a real threat of being buried alive before the invention of the electroencephalograph, which records the biocurrents of the brain,

This is not surprising, because in a severe form of the disease, the sleeper does not show any signs of life, it is not for nothing that the meaning of the word lethargy is translated from Greek as "Imaginary death"or "Small life".

Nowadays in England there is still a law that obliges morgues to have a bell, so that a suddenly revived “dead man” can announce his resurrection.

Lethargic sleep has occupied human imagination for a long time.

• The dead princess at Pushkin's, who lay under the wing of sleep, fresh and quiet, "just what."

• Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale of the French poet Charles Perrault, A.K. Tolstoy - world literature is replete with poetic characters who have slept through the lethargic sleep of a decade, year or century. According to legend, Epimenides of Crete, an ancient Greek poet, slept for 57 years in the cave of Zeus.

The characters of fairy tales and poems differ little from the lethargic sleep of patients in neurological clinics.

The difference from the Dead Princess is that they breathe, but very weakly, and their heart beats so quietly and rarely that we canbut think about the death of the patient.

Signs of lethargic sleep

Decrease:

• physical manifestations of life,
• metabolism,
• heart rate, respiration, pulse,
• lack of reaction to pain and sound,

Lethargic sleep is one of the forms of cataplexy, a severe, incurable disease. It is manifested by complete or partial immobility of the body for up to 10 minutes with preservation of consciousness. The risk of injury is high.

For a long time, a person does not eat, does not drink, loses weight, dehydration sets in, and there are no physiological functions.

There is also a case of perennial lethargy with preserved food intake function.

Mental development in a long lethargic sleep is inhibited. In Buenos Aires, a six-year-old girl fell asleep and plunged into lethargy for 25 years. When she woke up as a mature woman, she asked where her dolls were.

Lethargy often stops the physical aging process.

Beatrice Hubert, a resident of Brussels, slept for twenty years. Awakened from her sleep, she was as young as before her lethargy. True, this miracle did not last long, she made up for her physical age in a year - she aged 20 years.

Cases of lethargic sleep

During the First World War, soldiers and some residents of the front-line cities, it was not possible to wake them up.

Mario Tello, an Argentine of nineteen, fell asleep for seven years after hearing about the assassination of her idol President Kennedy.

A similar story happened to one official in India. Bopalhand Lodha, Minister of Public Works of Yodpur State, was removed from office due to circumstances unknown to him.

He demanded that the state government conduct an investigation, but the resolution of his issue was delayed for a month and a half.

All this time Bopalhand lived in constant and suddenly fell into a lethargic sleep, which lasted seven years. During sleep, Lodha never opened his eyes, did not speak, he lay as if dead.

He was properly cared for: food and vitamins were supplied through rubber tubes inserted into his nostrils, his body was turned over every half hour to avoid stagnation of blood, muscles were massaged.

Perhaps he would have slept longer if it hadn't been for the malaria. The temperature rose to forty degrees on the first day of illness, and the next day it dropped to 35.

The former minister moved his fingers that day, soon opened his eyes, a month later he was able to turn his head and sit on his own.

Only six months later, his sight returned, and finally recovered from lethargy a year later. Six years later, he celebrated his 75th birthday.

In the 14th century, Francesco Petrarca, an Italian poet, fell seriously ill and fell into a lethargic sleep for several days. He was considered dead because he showed no signs of life. During the burial ceremony, the poet comes to life literally at the edge of the grave. He was then forty years old, for another thirty he lived and worked happily.

Milkmaid Kalinicheva Praskovya from the Ulyanovsk region began to suffer from periodic bouts of lethargy since 1947, when her husband was arrested after the wedding. The fear that she would not be able to provide for the child alone pushed her to have an abortion from a healer.

The neighbors denounced her, and Praskovya was arrested and exiled to Siberia - at that time abortion was prohibited.

There she had her first seizure while working. The guards thought she was dead. But the doctor, having examined Kalinichev, said that the woman had plunged into a lethargic sleep, that this was a protective reaction of her body to the stress and hard work she had experienced.

After returning to her native village, Praskovya gets a job on a farm, attacks overtake her in a club, in a store, at work. The villagers were so accustomed to her strange behavior that they immediately brought the sleeping woman to the hospital.

Lethargy comes from the Greek lethe "oblivion" and argia "inaction." This is not just one type of sleep, but a real illness. In a person in lethargic sleep, all vital processes of the body slow down - the heartbeat becomes rare, breathing is superficial and imperceptible, there is almost no reaction to external stimuli.

How long can a lethargic sleep last

Lethargic sleep can be light or heavy. In the case of the first, the person has a noticeable breathing, he retains a partial perception of the world - the patient looks like a deeply sleeping person. In severe form, it becomes like a dead man - the body grows cold and pale, the pupils stop responding to light, breathing becomes so imperceptible that even with the help of a mirror it is difficult to determine its presence. Such a patient begins to lose weight, biological secretions stop. In general, even at the modern level of medicine, the presence of life in such a patient is determined only with the help of an ECG and a chemical blood test. What can we say about the early eras, when humanity did not know the concept of "lethargy", and any person who was cold and unresponsive to stimuli would be considered dead.

The length of the lethargic sleep is unpredictable, as is the length of the coma. An attack can last from several hours to tens of years. There is a known case observed by Academician Pavlov. He came across a patient who "slept through" the revolution. Kachalkin was in lethargy from 1898 to 1918. After waking up, he said that he understood everything that was happening around him, but "felt a terrible, irresistible heaviness in the muscles, so that it was even difficult for him to breathe."

The reasons

Despite the case described above, lethargy is most common in women. Especially for those who are prone to hysteria. A person can fall asleep after severe emotional stress, as happened with Nadezhda Lebedina in 1954. After a quarrel with her husband, she fell asleep and woke up only 20 years later. Moreover, according to the recollections of loved ones, she reacted emotionally to what was happening. True, the patient herself does not remember this.

In addition to stress, schizophrenia can also cause lethargy. For example, the Kachalkin mentioned by us suffered from it. In such cases, according to doctors, sleep can be a natural reaction to illness.

In some cases, lethargy resulted from serious head injuries, severe poisoning, significant blood loss and physical exhaustion. A resident of Norway, Augustine Leggard, fell asleep after giving birth at 22 years.

Side effects and overdose of strong medications, such as interferon, an antiviral and anticancer drug, can lead to lethargic sleep. In this case, in order to get the patient out of the lethargy, it is enough to stop taking the medicine.

Recently, opinions about the viral causes of lethargy have been increasingly heard. So, doctors of medical sciences Russell Dale and Andrew Church, having studied the history of twenty patients with lethargy, revealed a pattern that many of the patients, before "falling asleep" had had a sore throat. Further searches for bacterial infection revealed a rare form of streptococci in all these patients. Based on this, scientists decided that the bacteria that caused sore throat changed their properties, overcame the immune defenses and caused inflammation of the midbrain. Such damage to the nervous system could provoke an attack of lethargic sleep.

Taphophobia

With the realization of lethargy as a disease, phobias came. Today taphophobia, or fear of being buried alive, is one of the most common in the world. Such famous personalities as Schopenhauer, Nobel, Gogol, Tsvetaeva and Edgar Poe suffered from it at different times. The latter devoted many works to his fear. His story "Buried Alive" describes many cases of lethargic sleep, which ended in failure: “I looked; and by the will of the invisible, who was still clutching my wrist, all the graves on the face of the earth opened before me. But alas! Not all of them fell asleep without waking sleep; there were many millions more than others who had not died forever; I saw that many seemingly resting in the world somehow changed those frozen, uncomfortable postures in which they were buried. "

Taphophobia is reflected not only in literature, but also in law and scientific thought. Back in 1772, the Duke of Mecklenburg introduced a mandatory postponement of burial until the third day after death, in order to prevent the possibility of burial alive. Soon, this measure was adopted in a number of European countries. Since the 19th century, the production of safe coffins, equipped with a means of escape for the "accidentally buried", began. Emmanuel Nobel made for himself one of the first crypts with ventilation and an alarm (a bell, which was set in motion with a rope installed in a coffin). Subsequently, inventors Franz Western and Johan Taberneg invented the protection of the bell from accidental ringing, equipped the coffin with an anti-mosquito net, and drained the coffin to avoid being flooded by rainwater.

Safe coffins exist to this day. The modern model was invented and patented in 1995 by the Italian Fabrizio Caseli. His project included an alarm, an intercom-like communication system, a flashlight, a breathing apparatus, a heart monitor, and a pacemaker.

Why sleepers don't age

Paradoxically, in the case of prolonged lethargy, a person practically does not change. He doesn't even age. In the cases described above, both women - Nadezhda Lebedina and Augustine Leggard, during sleep corresponded to their previous age. But as soon as their life took on a normal rhythm, the years took their toll. So, Augustine during the first year after awakening sharply aged, and the body of Nadezhda caught up with its "fifty kopecks" in less than six months. Doctors recall: “What we were able to observe is unforgettable! She was getting old before our eyes. Every day I added new wrinkles, gray hair. "

What is the secret of youthful sleepers, and how the body so quickly returns the lost years, scientists have yet to find out.

Lethargic sleep is a rare sleep disorder. Its duration ranges from several hours to several days, much less often - up to several months. The longest lethargic sleep was recorded in Nadezhda Lebedina, who fell into it in 1954 and woke up only 20 years later. Other cases of prolonged lethargic sleep have also been described. However, it should be noted that long-term lethargic sleep is extremely rare.

Causes of lethargic sleep

The causes of lethargic sleep have not yet been fully established. Apparently, lethargic sleep is caused by the occurrence of a pronounced deep and diffuse inhibitory process in the subcortex and cerebral cortex. Most often, it comes suddenly after severe neuropsychic shock, with hysteria, against the background of severe physical exhaustion (significant blood loss after childbirth). Lethargic sleep stops as suddenly as it began.

Symptoms of lethargic sleep

Lethargic sleep is manifested by a pronounced weakening of the physiological manifestations of life, a decrease in metabolism, inhibition of the reaction to stimuli or its complete absence. Cases of lethargic sleep can be mild or severe.

In mild cases of lethargic sleep, a person is immobile, his eyes are closed, breathing is even, stable and slow, the muscles are relaxed. At the same time, the chewing and swallowing movements are preserved, the pupils react to light, the person's eyelids "twitch", elementary forms of contact of the sleeping person with the surrounding persons can be preserved. Mild lethargic sleep resembles signs of deep sleep.

Lethargic sleep in severe form has more pronounced symptoms. There is a pronounced muscle hypotonia, the absence of some reflexes, the skin is pale, cold to the touch, pulse and breathing are determined with difficulty, there is no pupil response to light, blood pressure is reduced, and even strong pain stimuli do not cause a reaction in a person. Such patients do not drink or eat, their metabolism slows down.

Lethargic sleep does not require any special treatment, but in any case, the patient should be monitored for a long sleep by a doctor with a thorough examination. If necessary, symptomatic treatment is prescribed. Nutrition is carried out with easily digestible food rich in vitamins; in the absence of the opportunity to feed a person in a natural way, the nutritional mixture is introduced through a tube. The prognosis for lethargic sleep is favorable, there is no danger to the patient's life.

Sleep or coma?

Lethargic sleep should be distinguished from coma and a number of other conditions and diseases (narcolepsy, epidemic encephalitis). This is especially important since the approaches to their treatment differ significantly.

This is evidenced by the excavation of graves where the dead lay in the coffin in unnatural positions, as if resisting something. During a lethargic sleep, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to determine and say with certainty whether a person is alive or has departed to another world, because the boundaries separating life from death are vague and uncertain.

However, there were times when it was possible to escape from the grave captivity. For example, the case of an artillery officer who was thrown by a horse and broke his head when falling. The wound seemed to be harmless, they bled him, took measures to bring him to his senses, but all the efforts of the doctors were in vain, the man died, or rather, he was mistaken for the dead. The weather was hot, so it was decided to hurry up with the funeral and not wait three days.

Two days after the funeral, many relatives of the deceased came to the cemetery. One of them cried out in horror when he saw that the ground on which he had just sat "began to stir." This was the grave of an officer. Without hesitation, those who came took up shovels and dug up a shallow grave, which was somehow covered with earth. The "dead man" was not lying, but half-sitting in the coffin, the lid was torn off and slightly raised. After the "rebirth", the officer was taken to the hospital, where he said that, having regained consciousness, he heard the steps of people overhead. Thanks to the gravediggers, who carelessly covered the grave, the air got through the loose earth, which made it possible for the officer to receive some oxygen.

In a state of lethargy, people can be without interruption for many days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years, in exceptional cases - decades. Dr. Rosenthal in Vienna unveiled a case of trance in a hysterical woman who was declared dead by her doctor. Her skin was pale and cold, her pupils were narrowed and insensitive to light, her pulse was imperceptible, her limbs were relaxed. Melted sealing wax was dripped onto her skin and could not notice the slightest reflected movements. A small mirror was brought to the mouth, but no trace of moisture could be noticed on the surface.

Not the slightest breathing noise was heard, but in the region of the heart, listening showed a barely noticeable intermittent sound. The woman had already been in a similar, apparently lifeless state for 36 hours. When examined with intermittent current, Rosenthal found that the muscles of the face and limbs were contracting. The woman regained consciousness after 12 hours of faradization. Two years later, she was alive and well and told Rosenthal that at the beginning of the attack, she was not aware of anything, and then she heard talk about her death, but could not help herself.

An example of a longer lethargic sleep is given by the famous Russian physiologist V.V. Efimov. He said that one French 4-year-old girl with a diseased nervous system was frightened by something and fainted, and then plunged into a lethargic sleep that lasted 18 years without interruption. She was admitted to the hospital, where she was carefully looked after and nourished, thanks to this she grew into an adult girl. And although she woke up as an adult, her mind, interests, feelings remained the same as before lethargy. So, waking up from a lethargic sleep, the girl asked for a doll to play.

Even longer sleep was known to Academician I.P. Pavlov. For 25 years, the man lay in the clinic as a "living corpse." He did not make a single movement, did not utter a single word from the age of 35 to 60, when he gradually began to show normal motor activity, began to get up, talk, etc. The old man was asked how he felt throughout these long years, while lying "a living corpse." As it turned out, he heard a lot, understood, but could not move or speak. Pavlov explained this case by stagnant pathological inhibition of the motor cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. Towards old age, when the inhibitory processes weakened, cortical inhibition began to decrease and the old man woke up.

In America, in 1996, after 17 years of sleep, Greta Stargle from Denver, Colorado regained consciousness. "An innocent child in the body of a gorgeous woman" - this is how doctors call Greta. The fact is that, as journalists reported, in 1979, 3-year-old Greta was in a car accident. Grandma and grandpa died, and Greta fell asleep for ... 17 years. “- Miss Stargle’s brain was completely intact,” said the Swiss neurosurgeon Hans Jenkins, who flew to America to meet a recently recovered patient. "The 20-year-old beauty looks like an adult, but she retained the intelligence and innocence of a 3-year-old child." Greta is smart and learns pretty quickly. However, she has absolutely no knowledge of life. “We recently went to the supermarket together,” says Greta's mother Doris. - I walked away literally for a minute, and when I returned, Greta was already heading for the exit with some guy. It turned out that he invited her to go to his house and have some great fun, and Greta willingly agreed. She couldn't even imagine what exactly was meant. " After being tested, Greta is in school today. Her teachers assure that the girl gets along remarkably well with kids classmates. How the life of the former sleeping beauty will turn out, the future will show ...

In lethargic sleep, not only voluntary movements, but also simple reflexes are so suppressed, the physiological functions of the respiratory and circulatory organs are so inhibited that a person who is not familiar with medicine can mistake the sleeping person for a dead person. This is probably the origin of the belief in the existence of vampires and ghouls - people who died a "fake death", leaving their graves and crypts at night to maintain their half-alive, half-dead existence with the blood of living people.

Until the 18th century, a plague epidemic periodically swept across medieval Europe. The most terrible was the "black death" of the XIV century, which took away almost a quarter of the population of Europe. The merciless disease mowed down everyone indiscriminately. Every day, carriages loaded to the top with bodies transported the terrible cargo out of town to the grave pits. The doors of the houses where the infection settled were marked with red crosses. People left their relatives to the mercy of fate for fear of infection and left cities in the grip of death. Plague was considered a disaster worse than war. The fear of being buried alive was especially great from the 18th to the early 19th centuries. There are many known cases of premature burials. The degree of their reliability is different.

1865 - 5-year-old Max Hoffman fell ill with cholera, whose family owned a farm near a small town in Wisconsin (America). The urgently called doctor could not reassure the parents: in his opinion, there was no hope of recovery. After three days it was all over. The same doctor, covering Max's body with a sheet, declared him dead. The boy was buried in the village cemetery. The next night, my mother had a terrible dream. She dreamed that Max turned over in a coffin and seemed to be trying to get out of there. She saw him fold the pens and place them under his right cheek. The mother was awakened by her heartbreaking cry. She began to beg her husband to dig out the coffin with the child, he refused. Mr. Hoffman was convinced that her sleep was the result of a nervous shock and that removing the body from the grave would only increase her suffering. But the next night the dream was repeated, and this time the agitated mother could not be convinced.

Hoffmann sent his eldest son for a neighbor and a lantern, because their own lantern was broken. In the second hour of the night, the men began to exhume. They worked by the light of a lantern hanging from a nearby tree. When they finally dug to the grave and opened it, they saw that Max was lying on his right side, as his mother dreamed, with folded arms under his right cheek. The child showed no signs of life, but the father took the little body out of the coffin and rode on horseback to the doctor. With great distrust, the doctor set to work, trying to revive the boy, whom he declared dead two days ago. More than an hour later, his efforts were rewarded: the baby's eyelid twitched. Brandy was launched, bags of heated salt were put under the body and hands. Little by little, signs of improvement began to appear. In a week, Max fully recovered from his fantastic adventure. He lived to be 80 years old and died in Clinton, Iowa. Among his most memorable belongings were two small metal handles from the coffin, from which he was saved thanks to his mother's sleep.

As you know, lethargic sleep of natural, rather than traumatic or other origin, usually develops in hysterical patients. In some cases, healthy people who are not hysterical at all, using special psychotechnics, can cause similar conditions in themselves. For example, the Hindu yogis, using the techniques of self-hypnosis and holding the breath known to them, can, at will, bring themselves into a state of deepest and prolonged sleep, similar to lethargy or catalepsy.

1968 - Englishwoman Emma Smith set the world record for the duration of burial alive: she spent 101 days in a coffin! True ... not in a lethargic sleep and without the use of any psychotechnics, she just lay in a buried coffin in full consciousness. At the same time, air, water and food were fed into the coffin. Emma even had the opportunity to talk with those who were on the surface using a telephone set in a coffin ...

Society these days, is used to treating myths, legends, tales as fiction. People are used to judging the ancient Civilizations as underdeveloped and primitive. But some material finds in mines allow us to conclude that representatives of the ancient Civilization, possessing parapsychological abilities, went to the caves of the Himalayas and entered the state of Somati (when the Soul, leaving the body and leaving it in a “conserved” state, can at any time return to it, and it will come to life (this can happen in a day and in a hundred years, and in a million years), thus organizing the Gene pool of Mankind. According to scientists, sleep is the best medicine. Indeed, the kingdom of Morpheus saves people from many stresses, diseases , and simply relieves fatigue.

A normal person is believed to sleep for 5-7 hours. But sometimes the line between normal sleep and sleep, caused by stress, is very thin. We are talking about lethargy (Greek lethargia, from lethe - oblivion and argia - inaction), a painful state that resembles a dream and is characterized by immobility, the absence of reactions to external irritation and the absence of all external signs of life. People were always afraid to fall into a lethargic dream, because there was a danger of being buried alive.

For example, the famous Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, who lived in the 14th century, fell seriously ill at the age of 40. Once he lost consciousness, they considered him dead and were going to bury him. Fortunately, the law of that time forbade the burial of the dead earlier than a day after death. Having woken up almost at his grave, Petrarch said that he felt great. After that, he lived another 30 years.

1838 - An incredible incident happened in one of the English villages. During the funeral, when the coffin with the deceased was lowered into the grave and began to be buried, some unclear sound came from there. Until the frightened cemetery workers came to their senses, dug up the coffin and opened it, it was too late: under the lid they saw a face frozen in horror and despair. And the torn shroud and bruised hands showed that the help was late ...

In Germany in 1773, after cries coming from the grave, a pregnant woman who was buried the day before was exhumed. Eyewitnesses discovered traces of a fierce struggle for life: the nervous shock of the buried alive provoked a premature birth, and the child suffocated in the coffin along with his mother ...

The fears of the great writer Nikolai Gogol about being buried alive are well known. The writer suffered a final mental breakdown after a woman died, whom he infinitely loved, Ekaterina Khomyakova, the wife of his friend. Gogol was shocked by her death. Soon, he burned the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls and went to bed. Doctors advised him to lie down, but the body defended the writer too well: he fell asleep with a sound, saving sleep, which at that time was mistaken for death. In 1931, according to a plan for the improvement of Moscow, the Bolsheviks decided to destroy the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, where Gogol was buried. During the exhumation, those present saw with horror that the skull of the great writer was turned to one side, and the matter in the coffin was torn ...

In England, there is still a law according to which there should be a bell with a rope in all morgue refrigerators so that a revived “deceased” can call for help with a bell ringing. In the late 1960s, the first apparatus was created there to capture the smallest electrical activity of the heart. During the testing of the device in the morgue, a living girl was found among the corpses.

The causes of lethargy are not yet known to medicine. Medicine describes cases of people falling into such a dream due to burnout, large blood loss, hysterical fit, fainting. Interestingly, in case of a threat to life (bombing during the war), those sleeping with a lethargic sleep woke up, could walk, and fell asleep again after shelling. The mechanism of aging in those who fall asleep is very slow. For 20 years of sleep, they do not change outwardly, but then in a state of wakefulness they catch up with their biological age in 2-3 years, turning into old people before our very eyes.

Nazira Rustemova from Kazakhstan, being a 4-year-old child, first "fell into a state similar to delirium, and then fell asleep in a lethargic sleep." The doctors of the regional hospital considered her dead, and soon her parents buried the girl alive. The only thing that saved her was that, according to Muslim tradition, the body of the deceased was not buried in the ground, but was wrapped in a shroud and buried in a burial house. Nazira spent 16 years in lethargy and woke up when she was supposed to be 20. According to Rustemova herself, “on the night after the funeral, her father and grandfather heard a voice in a dream that told them that she was alive”, which made them take a closer look to the "corpse" - they found faint signs of life.

The case of the longest officially registered lethargic sleep recorded in the Guinness Book of Records happened in 1954 with Nadezhda Artemovna Lebedina (who was born in 1920 in the village of Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk region) due to a strong quarrel with her husband. As a result of the resulting stress, Lebedina fell asleep for 20 years and came to her senses again only in 1974. The doctors recognized her as absolutely healthy.

There is another record, which for some reason did not enter the Guinness Book of Records. Augustine Leggard fell asleep after the stress of childbirth ... But she could very slowly open her mouth when she was fed. 22 years later, the sleeping Augustine remained just as young. But then the woman perked up and spoke: "Frederick, it must be late, the child is hungry, I want to feed him!" But instead of a newborn baby, she saw a 22-year-old young woman, like two drops similar to herself ... Soon, however, time took its toll: the awakened woman began to age rapidly, a year later she had already turned into an old woman and died five years later.

There are cases when lethargic sleep occurred periodically. A priest from England slept six days a week, and on Sunday he got up to eat and serve a prayer service. Usually in mild cases of lethargy, immobility, muscle relaxation, even breathing are observed, but in severe cases, which are rare, there is a picture of really imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils do not respond, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, strong painful irritations do not cause a reaction. reflexes are absent. The best guarantee against lethargy is a quiet life and no stress.

Lethargic sleep is a special painful condition of a person, reminiscent of deep sleep.

It is characterized by:

Lack of response to any external stimuli;
-complete immobility;
- a sharp slowdown in all life processes.

As video films telling about a lethargic dream testify, in a state of lethargic sleep a person is able to stay from several hours to several weeks, and in exceptional cases it can drag on for years. With the help of hypnosis, one can also achieve a state of lethargic sleep.

Causes of lethargic sleep

Studies have shown that the causes of lethargic sleep can be very different. Most often, lethargy occurs in hysterical women. Strong emotional stress can also lead to lethargic sleep. There is a known case when one young woman quarreled with her husband, then fell asleep, and woke up only 20 years later. Also, many cases of lethargy have been described, which arose after severe blows to the head, car accidents, stress from the loss of loved ones.
Research by British scientists said that many patients suffered sore throat before falling into a lethargic sleep, however, they did not receive official confirmation of the fact that bacteria were involved. But hypnosis can lead a person into a state of lethargy. Indian yogis, meditating and applying the technique of slowing down the breathing, are able to induce artificial lethargy in themselves.

Symptoms of lethargic sleep

A person’s consciousness in a state of lethargy is usually preserved, he is able to perceive and even remember the events around, but he is not able to react in any way. This condition should be distinguished from narcolepsy and encephalitis. In the most severe cases, a picture of imaginary death is observed: the skin turns pale and colder, the pupils stop responding to light, pulse and breathing are difficult to determine, blood pressure drops and even severe pain irritations do not cause a response. For several days, a person cannot eat or drink, the excretion of feces and urine stops, a sharp dehydration of the body and weight loss occur. In milder cases of lethargy, breathing is even, muscles relax, sometimes their eyes roll back and their eyelids flinch. But the ability to swallow and make chewing movements remains, and the perception of the environment can also be partially preserved. If feeding the patient is not possible, then it is done using a special probe.

The symptoms of lethargy are not very specific, and there are still many questions regarding their nature. Some doctors believe that the cause is a metabolic disorder, while others see a form of sleep pathology here. The latest version became popular thanks to the research of the American Eugene Azersky, who noticed an interesting pattern: a person who is in the phase of slow sleep (orthodox) is completely motionless, and only half an hour later he can start tossing and turning and uttering words. If it is at this time (at the time of REM sleep) that he wakes him up, then the awakening will turn out to be very easy and quick, while the awakened one remembers everything that he dreamed about. This phenomenon was later explained by the fact that the activity of the nervous system in the phase of paradoxical sleep is very high. And the varieties of lethargy most of all resemble the phase of superficial shallow sleep, therefore, getting out of this state, people can describe in detail everything that happened around them.

If the immovable state continued for a long time, then the person returns from it not without loss, having received vascular atrophy, bedsores, septic lesions of the bronchi and kidneys.

Phobias associated with lethargy

After watching the video and photo-lethargic sleep, many people also begin to experience fear, traditionally associated with lethargy - to be buried alive.

In 1772, several European countries were legislatively ordered to bury the dead only on the third day after the death was ascertained. It's funny that in America at the end of the 19th century, coffins were produced here and there, arranged so that an imaginary dead man, waking up there, could raise the alarm. A legend is known about Gogol’s lethargic dream, although it is unreliable, but the fact that he, like other famous people (Nobel, Tsvetaeva, Schopenhauer) suffered from taphophobia is a historical fact, because in their notes they asked relatives not to rush to the funeral.

How to distinguish lethargy from death?

A person in a state of lethargy does not react at all to the environment. Even if molten wax or hot water is poured on his skin, no reaction will follow, except for the patient’s pupils to respond to the pain. Under the influence of current, the muscles of the body are able to twitch, the electroencephalogram shows weak brain activity, and the ECG captures heart contractions.

Studies have shown that only a short time the brain of a patient with lethargy is dormant, and the rest of the time it is awake and receives signals from noise, light, pain, heat, but does not give back commands to the body.

Notable cases of lethargic sleep

Cases of lethargic sleep were especially frequent during and after the First World War, when an epidemic of lethargy was observed, and many soldiers and residents of the front-line European cities fell asleep and could not wake up. Then the epidemic grew into a pandemic.

The nineteen-year-old Argentine, having learned that they had killed her idol, President Kennedy, turned off for seven years.

A similar story happened to a senior Indian official who was inexplicably removed from office. Without waiting for clarification of circumstances, the official fell into a lethargy, in which he stayed for seven years. Fortunately, he was properly looked after: feeding through tubes inserted into the nostrils, constant turning of the body to avoid bedsores, body massage, therefore, it is possible that in such conditions he would have slept longer, but malaria intervened. On the first day after infection, his body temperature jumped to 40 degrees, but the next day it dropped to 35 degrees. On this day, the former official was able to move his fingers, then opened his eyes, and a month later he turned his head and could sit on his own. His sight returned only six months later, and he was able to completely shake off lethargy after a year, and six years later he turned 70 years old.

The great Italian poet of the 14th century Francesco Petrarca, after a serious illness, fell into a state of lethargy for several days. Since he did not show any signs of life, he was considered dead. The poet was lucky that he managed to wake up literally at the edge of the grave at the time of the funeral ceremony. But he was then only 40 years old, after which he was able to live and create for another thirty.

One of the milkmaids from the Ulyanovsk region after the arrest of her husband immediately after the wedding, began attacks of lethargy, which were repeated periodically. She was afraid of not being able to raise a child alone and had an abortion from a healer. Since abortion was forbidden in those years, and the neighbors found out about him, they reported to her, as a result of which the milkmaid was sent to Siberia, where she had the first attack. The guards considered her dead, however, the doctor who examined her was able to diagnose lethargy. He attributed this to the body's response to hard work and stress. When the milkmaid was able to return to her native village, she again began to work on the farm, and attacks of lethargy began to overtake her everywhere: at work, in the store, in the club. Accustomed to these oddities, fellow villagers got used to them and with each new case they simply took her to the hospital.

A unique case took place in Norway, where, after a difficult birth, one Norwegian woman fell into a state of lethargy, in which she remained for 22 years. Over the years, her body has stopped aging, likening a sleeping fabulous beauty. After waking up, she lost her memory, and next to her, instead of a tiny daughter, she found an adult girl, almost the same age. Unfortunately, the awakened woman immediately began to age rapidly and lived only five years.

One of the longest lethargic dreams occurred with a 34-year-old Russian woman who quarreled with her husband. Staying in shock, she fell asleep and woke up only 20 years later, which is even noted in the Guinness Book of Records.

As for Gogol, only vague and contradictory rumors circulated around his exhumation about his either missing or turned skull.