17, 1864, Mr. Blaudet
communicated a report upon a young woman of thirty summers who, being
subject to nervous attacks, fell, after her crises, into a sort of
lethargic sleep which lasted several weeks and sometimes several months.
One of her sleeps, especially, lasted from the beginning of the year
1862 until March, 1863.
Dr. Paul Levasseur relates that, in a certain English family, lethargy
seemed to have become hereditary. The first case was exhibited in an old
lady who remained for fifteen days in an immovable and insensible state,
and who afterward, on regaining her consciousness, lived for quite a
long time. Warned by this fact, the family preserved a young man for
several weeks who appeared to be dead, but who came to life again.
Dr. Pfendler, in an inaugural thesis (Paris, 1833), minutely describes a
case of apparent death of which he himself was a witness. A young girl
of Vienna at the age of 15 was attacked by a nervous affection that
brought on violent crises followed by lethargic states which lasted
three or four days. After a time she became so exhausted that the first
physicians of the city declared that there was no more hope. It was not
long, in fact, before she was observed to rise in her bed and fall back
as if struck with death.
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