Lethargy: Between life and death. Lethargic sleep: interesting facts, causes and manifestation
A mysterious disease called "lethargy" has been known to mankind for more than one millennium. However, no one has yet been able to unravel its nature.
A person falls into a strange state and finds himself, as it were, between two worlds. Outwardly, he looks like a dead person: cold and pale skin, pupils that do not react to light, breathing and pulse are not detected, reflexes are absent. But at the same time, a person continues to live - he hears and understands everything that happens around him.
It is difficult even to imagine how many people who were in a state of lethargy were mistaken for the dead and buried alive. Such statistics have never been kept. And only a few cases became public.
False death is also mentioned by ancient authors - the Greek philosopher Democritus and the Roman scientist Pliny. There is a legend about the Greek Empidocle from Agrigento, a miracle worker with unusual powers. He managed to resurrect a woman who had been without breathing for a whole month.
According to legend, the Roman doctor Asklepiad was able to bring to life people whom everyone already considered dead. Once, meeting with a funeral procession, he exclaimed: "Do not bury a man who is alive!"
In Byzantium, supposedly dead and resurrected people were called "fading". During the solemn ceremony, they were declared alive and baptized again.
Eight cases of resurrection are described in the Bible. This art was owned by the prophets Elijah, Elisha, Peter and Paul. Moreover, according to modern researchers, their actions are similar to the provision of first aid to people who are in a faint or lethargic sleep. There is a parable about how Jesus resurrected the daughter of Ivir, the head of the synagogue.
In the Middle Ages, cases of unexpected resurrection were considered witchcraft. Often, miraculously escaping death from suffocation in their own grave, people died under torture by inquisitors and at the stake.
The famous Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch died twice. For almost a day he lay as if dead. But a few hours before the funeral he suddenly woke up. He complained that he was cold, scolded the servants. Petrarch lived another 30 years and created during this time the best of his sonnets.
The peak of the burials of people who were mistakenly considered dead fell in Europe in the 18th century. According to the researchers, two reasons played a huge role here.
First, the low level of qualified medical care. And secondly, at that time there were a lot of neuropsychiatric disorders in society.
The fear of being buried alive was widespread. And it was then that the first attempts were made to prevent premature burials.
In Germany, the famous 18th-century doctor Hufelan created a project for houses for the dead. Of these, the first was built in Weimar. Subsequently, houses for the dead, modeled on the Weiermar one, appeared in Hamburg, Riga and other cities.
In the 18th century, other methods were used. For example, they attached a pipe to the coffin that went to the surface of the earth so that a scream could be heard. Or they put tools in the grave - “so that the buried person, if he comes to life, could free himself on his own.
However, despite all the precautions taken, cases when living people were mistaken for the dead and buried were recorded in the 19th century.
One of the most dramatic took place in 1893 in the German town of Eizenberg. The people who were at the cemetery heard a noise - it came from the grave, in which a young pregnant woman was buried the day before. She was still alive when they dug her up. Childbirth has begun. But a few hours later, the mother and child died.
In Russia, lethargy was considered a demonic obsession. In rural areas, this phenomenon was called "sleeping room". A priest came to the sick person, who read prayers and sprinkled the walls with holy water.
Lethargic sleep is a state of pathological sleep with a more or less pronounced weakening of the physical manifestations of life, with immobility, a significant decrease in metabolism and a weakening or lack of response to sound, tactile (touch) and pain stimuli.
For the most part, the line that separates Life from Death is, at best, deceptive and uncertain. Who can tell where one ends and the other begins? It is known that there are diseases in which all obvious signs of life disappear, but, strictly speaking, they do not disappear completely, but are only interrupted. There is a temporary stop in the work of an unknown mechanism. One of these diseases is well known to physicians and is called "lethargy". It has also been called hysterical sleep, lethargic sleep, small life, imaginary death. Cases of lethargic sleep are not so rare in our time, but still the most famous evidence dates back to the last century.
Here are the most famous cases of observation of lethargic sleep:
For 22 years, I.P. Pavlov observed the sick V. Kachalkin, who was in a state of lethargic sleep. He fell asleep at the end of the 19th century and slept until 1918. All this time he was under observation in a psychiatric hospital.
Norwegian Linggard fell asleep in 1919 and slept until 1941. All the doctors' efforts to wake her up were in vain. When she opened her eyes, an adult daughter and a very old husband were sitting by her bed, and she looked the same as she had 22 years ago. And it seemed to her that only one night had passed. But a year later, she aged for all two decades.
In one of the churches of Palermo (Italy) lies the body of Rosalia Lambardo, a little girl who died 73 years ago. Reports of strange events in this church have been disturbing the public for about 30 years. The cleaners refused to work in the mortuary after Rosalia's eyes opened for a moment one day. Local residents insist that they saw the girl's eyelids tremble repeatedly, and many heard the girl sigh.
Although the girl was considered dead from a medical point of view, in 1990, scientists conducted round-the-clock monitoring of her body for two weeks, with a constant measurement of the electrical activity of the brain. When they recorded the first burst of brain activity, which lasted 33 seconds, it became a sensation, everyone was amazed. The waves that recorded the state of the brain were weak, but clear. The second outbreak was much shorter and was identified three days later. Most likely, in this case, there was also an extremely rare manifestation of deep lethargic sleep.
While it passes, the person is just sleeping, or rather, he is in a state of lethargy. People sometimes do not believe that a person will really wake up. A lethargic dream does not kill, it seems to stop time so that a person wakes up a little later. It is unlikely that we will ever be able to understand the true nature of lethargic sleep, but for now it is easier for us to accept death than to fight for awakening. It is not a fact that all cases of lethargic sleep are known to mankind.
There are also cases when a lethargic dream arose periodically. One English priest slept six days a week, but got up every Sunday to eat and serve prayers.
Usually, in mild cases of lethargy, immobility, muscle relaxation, even breathing are observed. But in severe cases, which are rare, there is a real picture of imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils do not react, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, strong pain stimuli do not cause a reaction, there are no reflexes. For several days, patients do not drink, do not eat, the excretion of urine and feces stops.
The disease has existed for more than one century, but the causes of its occurrence are not reliably known to this day. Since the time of the first cases of illness, medicine has not been able to establish "the reasons for the temporary stop in the work of an unknown mechanism."
The lethargic dream of our compatriot Nadezhda Lebedina is 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.
Modern medicine practically does not use the phrase "lethargic sleep" in relation to this phenomenon, such terms as hysterical lethargy or hysterical hibernation are applied to it.
Physiological sleep and hysterical lethargy have nothing in common. The 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 captures the work of the brain corresponding to the waking state, the brain reacts to external stimuli, but the sleeping person does not wake up. It is impossible to forcibly withdraw from an attack of lethargy; it ends as unexpectedly as it begins. 
Sometimes the attack can be repeated repeatedly. In this case, the patient feels his approach according to characteristic signs. Since an attack is always caused by strong emotional stress or nervous shock, the autonomic nervous system reacts to it in the first place: headaches, lethargy, increased blood pressure and body temperature, increased heart rate, increased sweating.
A person feels like during hard physical work. The mental trauma that causes lethargy can be very severe or very minor: for people prone to hysteria, even minor troubles seem to be the end of the world.
Disconnecting from the outside world with its problems, patients unconsciously go to sleep.
Before the invention of the electroencephalograph, which recorded the biocurrents of the brain, it was possible to be buried alive during an attack of lethargy. This is not surprising, because in a severe form of the disease, the sleeping person 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 “little life”.
Today in England, a law is still observed requiring morgues to have a bell so that the “dead” who suddenly comes to life can announce his resurrection.
Lethargy has occupied the human imagination for a long time. The dead princess in Pushkin, who lay under the wing of sleep, is fresh and quiet, “that she just couldn’t breathe.”
The Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale of the French poet Charles Perrault, Potok-bogatyr A.K. Tolstoy - world literature is replete with poetic characters who have slept through the lethargic sleep of a decade, a year or a century. According to legend, Epimenides of Crete, an ancient Greek poet, slept for 57 years in the cave of Zeus.
The prolonged sleep of the characters of fairy tales and poems differs 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 you can think about the death of the patient.
Characteristic signs of lethargic sleep:
- decrease in the physical manifestations of life, metabolism, heart rate, respiration, pulse, immobility, lack of response to pain and sound.
- For a long time, a person does not eat, does not drink, loses weight, dehydration occurs, and there are no physiological functions.
- There is also a case of long-term lethargy that proceeded with the preserved function of eating.
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. Waking up as a mature woman, she asked where her dolls were.
Lethargy often stops the process of physical aging. Beatrice Hubert, a resident of Brussels, slept for twenty years. When she awoke from her sleep, she was as young as when she was lethargic. 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 front-line cities suddenly fell asleep, it was not possible to wake them up.
Mario Tello, a nineteen-year-old Argentine, fell asleep for seven years when she heard 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 mental tension and suddenly fell into a lethargic sleep that lasted seven years. During sleep, Lodha never opened his eyes, did not speak, lay as if dead. He was properly cared for: food and vitamins were supplied through rubber tubes inserted into the nostrils, every half an hour his body was turned over to avoid blood stasis, muscles were massaged.
Perhaps he would have slept longer if not for the malaria. The temperature rose on the first day of illness to forty degrees, 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 to him, and he finally recovered from lethargy a year later. Six years later, he celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday.
In the 14th century, Francesco Petrarca, an Italian poet, fell seriously ill and fell into a lethargic sleep for several days. He was presumed 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 prompted her to have an abortion by a healer. Neighbors denounced her, and Praskovya was arrested and exiled to Siberia - at that time abortions were prohibited.
There she had her first seizure while at work. The guards thought she was dead. But the doctor, having examined Kalinicheva, said that the woman had fallen into a lethargic sleep, that this was a protective reaction of her body to the stress and hard work 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 took the sleeping woman to the hospital.
From the Greek language "lethargy" is translated as "imaginary death" or "little life". Scientists still cannot say how to treat this condition, or name the exact causes that provoke an attack of the disease. As possible sources of lethargy, doctors point to severe stress, hysteria, great loss of blood and general exhaustion. So, in Astana, a girl fell into a lethargic sleep after a teacher reprimanded her. From resentment, the child began to cry, but not ordinary, but bloody tears. In the hospital where she was taken, the girl's body began to go numb, after which she fell asleep. Doctors diagnosed lethargy.
Those who have fallen into lethargic sleep repeatedly claim that before the next attack they start to have a headache and they feel lethargic in the muscles.
According to those who have woken up, throughout their lethargic sleep they can hear what is happening around, they are simply too weak to react. This is confirmed by doctors. During the study of the electrical activity of the brain of patients with lethargy, it was found that their brain works in the same way as when they are awake.
If the disease is mild, the person looks as if he is sleeping. However, with a severe form, it is easy to mistake him for a dead man. The heartbeat slows down to 2-3 beats per minute, biological secretions practically stop, the skin becomes pale and cold, and breathing is so light that even a mirror brought to the mouth is unlikely to fog up. It is important to distinguish hibernation from encephalitis or narcolepsy from lethargic sleep.
It is impossible to predict how long a lethargic sleep will last: a person can fall asleep for a few hours or oversleep for many years. A case is known when an English priest slept six days a week and woke up only on Sunday to eat and serve a prayer service.
AiF.ru talks about the most interesting cases of “imaginary death”.
Didn't wait
Medieval poet Francesco Petrarch awoke from a lethargic sleep in the midst of preparations for his funeral. The forerunner of the Renaissance woke up after a 20-hour sleep and, much to the surprise of everyone present, declared that he felt great. After this curious incident, Petrarch lived for another 30 years and was even crowned with a laurel wreath for his works in 1341.
After a fight
If a medieval poet slept only 20 hours, then there were cases when a lethargic dream lasted several years. Officially, the longest attack of lethargic sleep is the case Nadezhda Lebedina from Dnepropetrovsk, who slept for 20 years after a quarrel with her husband in 1954. The woman suddenly regained consciousness upon hearing of her mother's death. After waking up, Lebedina, who eventually got into the Guinness Book of Records, lived for another 20 years.
22 years as one moment
Since the functions of the body slow down during lethargic sleep, patients practically do not age. Norwegian native Augustine Linggard fell asleep in 1919 due to the stress of childbirth and slept for 22 years. Throughout all these years, she remained as young as on the day of the attack. Opening her eyes in 1941, she saw her old husband and already adult daughter near her bed. However, the effect of youth in such cases does not last long. A year later, the Norwegian looked her age.
Dolls first
Lethargy also slows down mental development. So, the first thing a 25-year-old girl from Buenos Aires wanted to do, waking up from a lethargic dream, was to play with dolls. An adult at the time of awakening, the woman fell asleep when she was only six years old, and simply did not understand how much she had grown.
Concert at the Morgue
There were cases when patients with lethargic sleep were already found in the morgue. In December 2011, in one of the morgues in Simferopol, a man woke up from a long sleep to the sounds of heavy metal. One of the city's rock bands used the mortuary as their rehearsal space. The room was well combined with the image of the group, and so they could be sure that their music would not bother anyone. During one of the rehearsals, the metalheads heard screams that came from one of the refrigeration units. The man, whose name has not been released, was released. And the group after this incident found another place for rehearsals.
However, the case in Simferopol is a rarity in the modern world. After the invention of the electroencephalograph, a device that records the biocurrents of the brain, the danger of being buried alive is practically reduced to zero.
What is lethargic sleep, interesting facts about cases of "imaginary death" occurring in medical practice, the causes of lethargy and its manifestation - you will read about this in this publication.
Definition of lethargy
Lethargic sleep is the cessation of a person's activity, in which he is immobilized, does not respond to stimuli from the outside world, but at the same time does not lose signs of life. Breathing is slow, the pulse is hardly audible and. The word "lethargy" comes from the Latin language. "Leta" means "forgetfulness". In the mythological stories of antiquity, the river Lethe was mentioned, flowing in the realm of the dead. According to legend, those deceased who have tasted the water from the source forget everything that happened to them in earthly life. "Argy" means "stupor".
Lethargic sleep: causes and types
For a person who experiences overexertion, weakness, apathy or lack of sleep, the risk of falling into lethargy is many times higher than for people who follow the daily routine, eat well and eat right.
Known types of lethargy: light form and heavy.
At the first, swallowing and chewing reflexes are preserved, the heartbeat and breathing are easily heard.
With a severe form of a person, it is easy to mistake for a dead person. The body temperature drops, the heartbeat is greatly muffled, there is no reaction.
Many European countries have long come up with ways to avoid burying a person alive by mistake. For example, in Slovakia, they consider it necessary to put a work phone in the coffin of the deceased, so that if he wakes up, he can call and report that he is alive. And in the UK, a bell is placed in the cells of the dead in the mortuary.
Lethargic sleep, as it became known to scientists, has its own “side effect”. A person who has fallen into a state of "imaginary death" for many years practically does not change outwardly. He looks at the age at which he fell into a slumber. This is because the biological processes in the body slow down. But after waking up, a person begins to age dramatically to the proper age. That is, if he fell asleep when he was 20 years old, and woke up at 30, some time after waking up, he will look at his real age. Despite external changes, a person thinks and behaves as if he had just fallen asleep. He will arrive at the intellectual level at which he was when immersed in "hibernation".
Lethargic sleep: case stories
Gogol's lethargic dream
In recent months, Gogol was exhausted mentally and physically. Depression overtook him. Nikolai Vasilyevich was a piously believing person and realized that "Dead Souls" contained a lot of sinful things. In addition, his works were criticized by Archpriest Matthew, with whom he was on close terms.
Feeling ashamed for what he had done, and trying to regain the purity of his soul, Gogol began to fast and thereby undermined his health. Doctors determined the diagnosis - meningitis, but it turned out to be erroneous. As a result, the treatment only aggravated the situation, on February 21, 1852, he "died" from heart failure.
During the transfer of the remains of the writer to the Novodevichy cemetery, an exhumation was carried out - the removal of the corpse from the burial place. There were about 20 people present. They said that Gogol's head was turned to one side, and the inside of the coffin was tattered. Because of what they made the assumption that Nikolai Vasilievich fell asleep in a lethargic sleep. During his lifetime, he spoke many times about the fear of being buried alive, probably he was embodied in reality. Later, the lethargic dream of the writer Gogol became one of the most striking cases, probably due to the significance of the personality of the deceased. The exact cause of his death has never been established.
This is one of the few cases where lethargic sleep has been recorded. Perhaps there were other interesting facts, but they were not subject to wide publicity. Law enforcement agencies were often involved in their investigation.
Geneticists say that lethargy is a special type of disease that is passed down through the genes from ancestors. If such cases have been noted in relation to relatives of other generations, they are advised to undergo a complete medical examination to determine the likelihood of such a dream. They recommend alerting the family and competent authorities for a full check-up for lethargy prior to burial.
A huge number of people around the planet are afraid one day to fall asleep and be buried alive. Indeed, during the existence of mankind, several such cases are known. Doctors classify such a state of the human body as lethargic sleep, but the nature of this phenomenon is not yet fully understood by scientists. Fortunately, the modern development of medicine makes it possible to distinguish sleeping people, even in a particularly deep phase, from really dead ones. But lethargy still occurs today. Let's talk about what is lethargy, what are the symptoms of this condition. What interesting facts are known about this phenomenon, and we will also find out the main symptoms and causes of lethargy.
Lethargic sleep or lethargy is inherently a pathological process that is similar in all respects to ordinary deep sleep, but has a special duration. Doctors say that this condition can last from several days to several weeks, while it adversely affects the activity of the organs and systems of the human body. With lethargy, the body ceases to adequately respond to external stimuli, the muscle muscles become as relaxed as possible, and myocardial activity slows down pathologically.
Lethargic sleep - interesting facts
The longest officially recorded lethargic dream is the case that occurred in 1954 with a woman from the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk. Nadezhda Lebedina had a big quarrel with her husband and slept for twenty years after that. The sudden death of her mother forced her to regain consciousness. And after a miraculous awakening, the woman lived another twenty years.
Literally four years ago, in one of the morgues in Simferopol, a man woke up from a lethargic sleep already in a refrigeration unit. And the music contributed to a wonderful awakening. Surprisingly, the morgue was used by one of the city's rock bands as a rehearsal room. The name of the man never became public, and the group had to look for another place for their rehearsals.
Interestingly, even with a very long lethargic sleep, people usually practically do not change externally and mentally. This is the well-known case of a Norwegian woman who slept for twenty-two years and looked quite young at the same time. However, this effect did not last long, and a year later she had grown old to her biological age.
A similar feature applies to mental development. So a girl from Buenos Aires woke up at twenty-five after nineteen years of lethargy and the first thing she wanted to do was play with dolls.
In many countries, it is customary to take measures to prevent people from being buried alive. So in Slovakia, a well-charged mobile phone is placed in the coffin of the deceased. And in England, in the refrigerating chambers of the morgue, there is a special bell that allows the awakened person to announce himself.
Symptoms of lethargic sleep
This pathological condition is characterized by a fairly pronounced symptomatology. Once the patient simply does not wake up after a normal night or daytime sleep, and all attempts to wake him up are unsuccessful. It seems that he died unexpectedly in his sleep, but a thorough examination refutes this.
The patient's viability is quite difficult to determine, since all unconditioned reflexes are completely absent, and signs of life are mild. For example, the patient's skin becomes pale, looks like a corpse. The presence of breathing is also determined with difficulty, and there is no noticeable pulse at all. In addition, the victim has a decrease in blood pressure, he does not respond to pain.
Of course, while in a lethargic sleep, the patient does not consume food and food. Therefore, his weight falls, and feces and urine are not excreted.
In mild cases of lethargy, the patient has markedly even breathing, his muscles are relaxed, his eyelids twitch, and his eyeballs roll back. The ability to swallow may also be preserved, as well as the ability to perform chewing or swallowing movements. In some cases, patients can even perceive the world around them.
But most often, after waking up with lethargy, the patient cannot remember any changes. He looks like he literally just fell asleep. In most cases, such patients feel normal after waking up, and studies have not shown any particular disturbances.
Why does lethargy occur, what are its causes?
To date, doctors have not yet been able to definitively determine the causes of the onset of lethargic sleep. Experts say that such a phenomenon is most likely due to the development of a pronounced inhibitory process inside the subcortex and cerebral cortex, which, at the same time, has a pronounced deep and diffuse character.
In most cases, this condition develops suddenly, after serious neuropsychic shocks, as well as with hysteria and as a result of severe physical exhaustion, for example, after severe blood loss or childbirth. Also, lethargy can develop with organic ailments of the brain, for example, with catatonia. Lethargy usually stops as suddenly as it started. It is impossible to determine its duration in advance.
Fortunately, today the modern development of medicine makes it possible to accurately determine the viability of a person and distinguish the onset of lethargic sleep from real death.
Ekaterina, www.site
P.S. The text uses some forms characteristic of oral speech.
