Which king fell into a lethargic sleep? Lethargic sleep: interesting facts, causes and manifestations. Awakening and consequences

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 for Nadezhda Lebedina, who fell into it in 1954 and woke up only 20 years later. Other cases of prolonged lethargic sleep have 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 widespread inhibitory process in the subcortex and cerebral cortex. Most often, it occurs suddenly after severe neuropsychic shocks, with hysteria, against the background of severe physical exhaustion (significant blood loss, after childbirth). Lethargic sleep ends 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, suppression of the reaction to stimuli or its complete absence. Cases of lethargic sleep can occur in both mild and severe forms.

In mild cases of lethargic sleep, a person is motionless, his eyes are closed, his breathing is even, stable and slow, his muscles are relaxed. At the same time, chewing and swallowing movements are preserved, the pupils react to light, the person’s eyelids “twitch,” and elementary forms of contact between the sleeper and surrounding persons may be preserved. Mild lethargic sleep resembles signs of deep sleep.

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

Lethargic sleep does not require any special treatment, but in any case of long sleep, the patient should be observed by a doctor and undergo a thorough examination. If necessary, symptomatic treatment is prescribed. Nutrition is carried out with easily digestible food rich in vitamins; if it is not possible to feed the person naturally, the nutritional mixture is administered 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.

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

However, there were cases when it was possible to escape from grave captivity. For example, the case of an artillery officer who was thrown by a horse and broke his head in the fall. The wound seemed to be harmless, they bled him, they 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 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 screamed in horror when he saw that the ground on which he had just been sitting had “moved.” This was the grave of an officer. Without hesitation, those who came took up shovels and dug up a shallow grave, 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 “second birth,” the officer was taken to the hospital, where he said that, having regained consciousness, he heard the footsteps of people overhead. Thanks to the gravediggers, who carelessly filled the grave, air entered through the loose soil, which made it possible for the officer to receive some oxygen.

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

Not the slightest breathing noise was heard, but in the region of the heart, auscultation revealed a barely noticeable intermittent sound. The woman had been in a similar, apparently lifeless state for 36 hours. When examining intermittent current, Rosenthal found that the muscles of the face and limbs contracted. The woman came to her senses 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 unaware of anything, and then heard talk about her death, but could not help herself.

An example of 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 fell into a lethargic sleep that lasted 18 years without a break. She was admitted to the hospital, where she was carefully looked after and nourished, thanks to which she grew into an adult girl. And even though she woke up as an adult, her mind, interests, feelings remained the same as they were before lethargy. So, waking up from a lethargic sleep, the girl asked for a doll to play with.

Academician I. P. Pavlov knew that sleep was even longer. The man lay in the clinic as a “living corpse” for 25 years. He did not make a single movement, did not utter a single word from the age of 35 until the age of 60, when he gradually began to show normal motor activity, began to stand up, speak, etc. They began to ask the old man what he felt during this period. these long years while he lay as a “living corpse.” As they found out, he heard a lot, understood, but could not move or speak. Pavlov explained this case by congestive pathological inhibition of the motor cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. In old age, when the inhibitory processes weakened, cortical inhibition began to decrease and the old man woke up.

In America in 1996, after a 17-year sleep, Greta Stargle from Denver, Colorado regained consciousness. “An innocent child in the body of a luxurious woman” is what doctors call Greta. The fact is that, as journalists reported, in 1979, 3-year-old Greta was in a car accident. Grandparents died, and Greta fell asleep for... 17 years. “Miss Stargle’s brain turned out to be absolutely undamaged,” noted Swiss neurosurgeon Hans Jenkins, who flew to America to meet the patient who had recently regained consciousness. “The 20-year-old beauty looks like an adult, but has retained the intelligence and innocence of a 3-year-old child.” Greta is smart and learns quite 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 towards the exit with some guy. It turned out that he invited her to go to his house and have a lot of fun, and Greta readily agreed. She couldn’t even imagine what exactly was meant.” Having passed the test, Greta is studying at school today. Her teachers assure that the girl gets along well with the kids in her class. The future will tell how the life of the former sleeping beauty will turn out...

During 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 with little knowledge of medicine may mistake the sleeping person for the dead. This is probably where the belief in the existence of vampires and ghouls originates - people who died a “fake death”, leaving graves and crypts at night to maintain their half-living, half-dead existence with the blood of living people.

Until the 18th century, plague epidemics periodically swept through medieval Europe. The worst was the Black Death of the 14th century, which killed almost a quarter of Europe's population. The merciless disease decimated everyone indiscriminately. Every day, carts loaded to the brim with bodies carried the terrible cargo out of the city to the grave pits. The doors of houses where the infection had settled were marked with red crosses. People abandoned their relatives to the mercy of fate for fear of infection and left cities in the grip of death. The 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 varies.

1865 - 5-year-old Max Hoffman, whose family had a farm near a small town in Wisconsin (America), fell ill with cholera. An urgently called doctor could not reassure the parents: in his opinion, there was no hope for recovery. Three days later 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, the mother had a terrible dream. She dreamed that Max was turning over in his grave and seemed to be trying to get out of there. She saw him fold his hands and put them under his right cheek. The mother woke up from her heartbreaking scream. She began to beg her husband to dig up the coffin with the child, but 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 repeated itself, and this time it was impossible to convince the worried mother.

Hoffmann sent his eldest son to fetch a neighbor and a lantern, because their own lantern was broken. At two o'clock in the morning the men began the exhumation. They worked by the light of a lantern hanging on a nearby tree. When they finally got to the coffin and opened it, they saw that Max was lying on his right side, as his mother had dreamed, with his hands folded under his right cheek. The child showed no signs of life, but the father took the body out of the coffin and rode on horseback to the doctor. With great disbelief, the doctor set to work, trying to revive the boy he had declared dead two days ago. More than an hour later, his efforts were rewarded: the baby’s eyelid twitched. They used brandy, and placed bags of heated salt under the body and arms. Little by little, signs of improvement began to appear. Within a week, Max had fully recovered from his fantastic adventure. He lived to the age of 80 and died in Clinton, Iowa. Among his most memorable things were two small metal handles from the coffin from which he was rescued thanks to his mother's dream.

As is known, lethargic sleep of natural, and not traumatic or other origin, usually develops in hysterical patients. In some cases, healthy people who are not at all hysterical, using special psychotechniques, can induce similar states in themselves. For example, Hindu yogis, using the techniques of self-hypnosis and breath-holding known to them, can voluntarily bring themselves into a state of deepest and longest sleep, similar to lethargy or catalepsy.

1968 - Englishwoman Emma Smith set a world record for the longest 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 simply lay in a buried coffin, fully conscious. At the same time, air, water and food were supplied to the coffin. Emma even had the opportunity to talk with those who were on the surface using a telephone installed in the coffin...

Society these days is accustomed to treating myths, legends, and tales as fiction. People are accustomed to judging ancient Civilizations as underdeveloped and primitive. But some material finds in the mines allow us to conclude that representatives of the ancient Civilization, possessing parapsychological abilities, went into the caves of the Himalayas and entered the state of Somati (when the Soul, having left the body and leaving it in a “preserved” state, can at any moment 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 Humanity. According to scientists, sleep is the best medicine. Indeed, the kingdom of Morpheus saves people from many stresses and diseases , and simply relieves fatigue.

It is believed that the duration of sleep for a normal person is 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 similar to sleep and characterized by immobility, lack of reactions to external irritation and the absence of all external signs of life. People were always afraid to fall into a lethargic sleep, because there was a danger of being buried alive.

For example, the famous Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, who lived in the 14th century, became seriously ill at the age of 40. One day he lost consciousness, he was considered dead and was about to be buried. Fortunately, the law of that time prohibited burying the dead earlier than one day after death. Having woken up almost at his grave, Petrarch said that he felt excellent. After that he lived another 30 years.

1838 - an incredible incident occurred in one of the English villages. During the funeral, when the coffin with the deceased was lowered into the grave and they began to bury it, some unclear sound came from there. By the time 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 help was too late...

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

The fears of the great writer Nikolai Gogol of being buried alive are well known. The writer suffered a final mental breakdown after the death of the woman whom he loved endlessly, 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 his body protected the writer too well: he fell into a sound, life-saving sleep, which at that time was mistaken for death. In 1931, according to the 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 material in the coffin was torn...

In England there is still a law according to which all morgue refrigerators must have a bell with a rope so that the revived “dead person” can call for help by ringing the bell. At the end of the 1960s, the first device was created there that made it possible to detect the most insignificant electrical activity of the heart. During 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 intoxication, large blood loss, hysterical attack, or fainting. It is interesting that in the event of a threat to life (bombing during the war), those sleeping in a lethargic sleep woke up, were able to walk, and after artillery shelling fell asleep again. The aging mechanism in those who fall asleep is very slow. Over 20 years of sleep, they do not change externally, but then, while awake, they catch up with their biological age in 2–3 years, turning into old people before our eyes.

Nazira Rustemova from Kazakhstan, as a 4-year-old child, first “fell into a state similar to delirium, and then fell asleep in a lethargic sleep.” Doctors at the regional hospital considered her dead, and soon the parents buried the girl alive. The only thing that saved her was that, according to Muslim custom, the body of the deceased is not buried in the ground, but is wrapped in a shroud and buried in a burial house. Nazira remained in lethargy for 16 years and woke up when she was about to turn 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 pay more attention to the “corpse” - they found faint signs of life.

The case of the longest officially registered lethargic sleep, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, occurred 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. Doctors declared her absolutely healthy.

There is another record, which for some reason was not included in the Guinness Book of Records. Augustine Leggard fell asleep after the stress of childbirth... But she was very slow to open her mouth when she was fed. 22 years passed, and sleeping Augustine remained just as young. But then the woman perked up and spoke: “Frederick, it’s probably already late, the child is hungry, I want to feed him!” But instead of a newborn baby, she saw a 22-year-old young woman, exactly like herself... Soon, however, time took its toll: the awakened woman began to rapidly grow old, a year later she turned into an old woman and died five years later.

There are cases where lethargic sleep occurred periodically. One 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 there is immobility, muscle relaxation, even breathing, but in severe cases, which are rare, there is a picture of a truly imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils do not react, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, strong painful stimuli do not cause a reaction, no reflexes. The best guarantee against lethargy is a calm life and lack of stress.

Lethargic sleep is one of the sleep disorders that is extremely rare. The duration of this condition can last from several hours to several days, less often - up to several months. There are only a few dozen cases recorded in the world where lethargic sleep lasted several years.

The longest “sleep hour” was recorded in 1954 for Nadezhda Lebedina, who woke up only twenty years later.

Causes

The severe form has distinctive features:

• Muscular hypotonia;
• Paleness of the skin;
• There is no reaction to external stimuli;
• Blood pressure is reduced;
• Some reflexes are missing;
• The pulse is practically undetectable.

In any case, after waking up, a person must register with a doctor for further monitoring of his body.

Diagnosis of the disease

Lethargic sleep should be distinguished from narcolepsy, epidemic sleep and coma. This is very important, since treatment methods for all these diseases differ significantly from each other.

It is not possible to conduct any research or laboratory tests. In this case, all that remains is to wait until the patient wakes up and independently talks about his feelings. VKontakte

Marina SARYCHEVA

“After severe suffering, death or a state that was considered death occurred... All the usual signs of death were revealed. His face became haggard, his features became sharper. Lips became whiter than marble. The eyes became cloudy. Rigor has set in. The heart didn't beat. She lay there like that for three days, and during this time her body became hard as stone.”

You, of course, recognized Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story “Buried Alive”?

In the literature of the past, this plot - the burial of living people who fell into a lethargic sleep (translated as “imaginary death” or “small life”) - was quite popular. Famous masters of words turned to him more than once, describing with great drama the horror of awakening in a gloomy crypt or in a coffin. For centuries, the state of lethargy has been shrouded in an aura of mysticism, mystery and horror. The fear of falling into a lethargic sleep and being buried alive was so common that many writers became hostages of their own minds and suffered from a psychological illness called taphophobia. Let's give a few examples.

F. Petrarch. The famous Italian poet, who lived in the 14th century, became seriously ill at the age of 40. One day he lost consciousness, he was considered dead and was about to be buried. Fortunately, the law of that time prohibited burying the dead earlier than one day after death. The predecessor of the Renaissance woke up after a sleep that lasted 20 hours, almost near his grave. Much to the surprise of everyone present, he said that he felt great. After this incident, Petrarch lived for another 30 years, but all this time he experienced incredible fear at the thought of being accidentally buried alive.

N.V. Gogol. The great writer was afraid that he would be buried alive. It must be said that the creator of Dead Souls had some reasons for this. The fact is that in his youth Gogol suffered malarial encephalitis. The disease made itself felt throughout his life and was accompanied by deep fainting followed by sleep. Nikolai Vasilyevich feared that during one of these attacks he might be mistaken for dead and buried. In the last years of his life, he was so frightened that he preferred not to go to bed and slept sitting up so that his sleep would be more sensitive.

However, in May 1931, when the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, where the great writer was buried, was destroyed in Moscow, during the exhumation those present were horrified to discover that Gogol’s skull was turned to one side. However, modern scientists refute the writer’s basis for lethargic sleep.

W. Collins. The famous English writer and playwright also suffered from taphophobia. As relatives and friends of the author of the novel “The Moonstone” say, he experienced such severe torment that every night he left a “suicide note” on his table by his bed, in which he asked to be 100% sure of his death and only then bury his body.

M.I. Tsvetaeva. Before her suicide, the great Russian poetess left a letter asking her to carefully check whether she really died. Indeed, in recent years, her taphophobia has worsened greatly.

In total, Marina Ivanovna left three suicide notes: one of them was intended for her son, the second for the Aseevs, and the third for the “evacuees,” those who would bury her. It is noteworthy that the original note to the “evacuees” was not preserved - it was seized by the police as evidence and then lost. The paradox is that it contains a request to check whether Tsvetaeva has died and whether she is not in a lethargic sleep. The text of the note to the “evacuees” is known from the list that the son was allowed to make.

A special painful state of a person, reminiscent of deep sleep. A person can remain in a state of lethargic sleep from several hours to several weeks, and in exceptional cases it can last for years.

Causes.

Suffered severe emotional stress;

Some features of the human psyche;

Head injuries, severe brain contusions, car accidents;

Stress from losing loved ones.

There are cases where people were put into a state of lethargy through hypnotic influence.

Some doctors believe that the cause is a metabolic disorder, while others see this as a type of sleep pathology.

Possible complications. If the immobile state lasts for a long time, then the person returns from it, having received complications such as vascular atrophy, bedsores, septic damage to the bronchi and kidneys.

Symptoms Lethargic sleep is characterized by:

lack of response to any external stimuli,

complete immobility,

a sharp slowdown in all life processes.

Human consciousness in a state of lethargy, he usually remains, he is able to perceive and even remember events around him, but is not able to react in any way. This condition should be distinguished from narcolepsy and encephalitis.

In the most severe cases, the picture is observed imaginary death: the skin turns pale and cold, the reaction of the pupils to light stops, pulse and breathing are difficult to determine, blood pressure drops and even strong painful stimuli do not cause a response. For several days a person cannot eat or drink, the excretion of feces and urine stops, severe dehydration and weight loss occur.

In milder cases of lethargy, breathing remains even, muscles relax, and sometimes the eyes roll back and the eyelids tremble. But the ability to swallow and make chewing movements is preserved, and the perception of the environment may also be partially preserved. If feeding the patient is impossible, then it is done using a special probe.

Diagnostics. Many people are afraid of being buried alive, but modern medicine knows how to prove whether a person is alive. To do this, the doctor conducts electrophysiological studies of the heart and brain, this way you can learn about the functioning of the heart and brain activity. When a person is in a lethargic sleep, the indicators involve the weak functioning of the organs.

Medical experts must carefully examine the patient, looking for signs that are characteristic of death - rigor, cadaveric spots. If there are no signs described above, they can make a small incision, examine the blood, and check its circulation.

Treatment. Lethargic sleep does not require treatment. The patient, as a rule, does not need to be hospitalized; he remains at home, among family and friends. No need for medications; food, water, vitamins are administered to him in dissolved form. The most important thing in this condition is the care that relatives must provide: hygiene procedures, compliance with temperature conditions.

The patient should be in a separate room so that he is not disturbed by surrounding noise - most of those who emerged from lethargic sleep say that they heard everything, but could not answer. Any action in caring for a patient must be reviewed by a doctor - we are talking about a very unusual disease, little studied and incomprehensible even to the scientific world, therefore even the smallest care, such as temperature, environment, lighting, must be taken into account.

Prevention. A unified method for the treatment and prevention of lethargy has not been developed. According to reports, people should follow several rules to avoid apathetic as well as lethargic attacks:

1. Avoid exposure to direct sunlight in hot and humid weather;

2. Drink enough liquid (preferably plain boiled water);

3. Limit the intake of sweet foods and foods containing starch, include as much plant fiber in the diet as possible;

4. Avoid lack of sleep and do not sleep too long;

5. Do not consume medications and alcoholic beverages at the same time.