Facts about lethargic sleep. Imaginary death: what is a lethargic dream. Known Cases of Lethargic Sleep

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.

Lethargy comes from the Greek lethe "forgetfulness" and argia "inaction". This is not just one of the varieties of sleep, but a real disease. In a person in a lethargic sleep, all the 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 lethargic sleep last

Lethargy can be mild or severe. In the case of the first, a person has noticeable breathing, he retains a partial perception of the world - the patient looks like a deeply sleeping person. In a severe form, it becomes like a dead man - the body turns cold and turns 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 discharge stops. 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 to say about the early eras, when humanity did not know the concept of "lethargy", and any cold and unresponsive person would be considered a dead man.

The length of a lethargic sleep is unpredictable, as is the length of a coma. An attack can last from several hours to decades. There is a known case observed by Academician Pavlov. He came across a patient who "overslept" the revolution. Kachalkin was lethargic 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 his 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 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 after 20 years. Moreover, according to the recollections of relatives, 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, Kachalkin, mentioned by us, suffered from it. In such cases, according to doctors, sleep can become a natural response to an illness.

In some cases, lethargy arose as a result of serious head injuries, with severe poisoning, significant blood loss and physical exhaustion. A resident of Norway, Augustine Leggard, fell asleep after giving birth for 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, to bring the patient out of lethargy, it is enough to stop taking the medicine.

Recently, opinions about the viral causes of lethargy have been heard more and more often. 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 a sore throat. Further searches for a bacterial infection revealed a rare form of streptococci in all these patients. Based on this, the scientists decided that the bacteria that caused angina changed their properties, overcame 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, came phobias. Today, taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive, is one of the most common in the world. At different times, such famous personalities as Schopenhauer, Nobel, Gogol, Tsvetaeva and Edgar Poe suffered from it. The latter devoted many works to his fear. His story “Buried Alive” describes many cases of lethargic sleep that ended in failure: “I peered; and by the will of the unseen, who was still squeezing my wrist, all the graves on the face of the earth were opened before me. But alas! Not all of them fell into a deep sleep, many millions more were others who had not died forever; I saw that many, it would seem, resting in the world, in one way or another changed those frozen, uncomfortable poses in which they were buried in the earth.

Taphophobia is reflected not only in literature, but also in law and scientific thought. As early as 1772, the Duke of Mecklenburg introduced a mandatory postponement of funerals until the third day after death to prevent the possibility of being buried alive. Soon this measure was adopted in a number of European countries. From the 19th century, safe coffins began to be produced, equipped with a means of salvation for the “accidentally buried”. Emmanuel Nobel made for himself one of the first crypts with ventilation and signaling (a bell, which was set in motion with a rope installed in the coffin). Subsequently, the inventors Franz Western and Johan Tabernag invented a bell protection against accidental ringing, equipped the coffin with a mosquito net, and installed drainage systems to avoid flooding with rainwater.

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

Why Sleepers Don't Get Old

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

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

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.

Lethargic sleep is a specific human condition in which the body falls into a deep sleep. Such a dream at first glance is similar to a coma, but in fact it is fundamentally different from it. Being in it, a person does not react to external stimuli, is motionless and it is almost impossible to wake him up. During sleep, they sharply decrease, all the processes necessary for life slow down. Such a dream can last from 2-3 hours to several years.

Causes of the narcoleptic condition

The reasons for the occurrence of such a dream are not completely known, because. have different character and manifestation. Those people who have suffered:

severe stress, emotional shock;
head injury;
electric shock;
severe poisoning;
starvation or dehydration;
overwork;
pain shock.

Cause lethargic sleep can:

serious disorders of the endocrine system;
diseases of the nervous system;
sleepwalking;
insomnia;
severe blood loss
and other types of sleep disorders.

Many medical specialists and scientists believe that people who suffer from increased emotionality and are prone to frequent tantrums are prone to this condition.

Symptoms of lethargic sleep

The state of a person in a lethargic dream is very similar to death. So, the following signs of LA are recorded:

heartbeat slows down;
ate breath noticeably;
body temperature becomes the same as the environment;
no reaction to touch, voices, pain and lighting effects;
slow down the aging and metabolism processes.

Manifestations of symptoms depend on the degree of complexity of the disease. It can be heavy or light. In any case, a person remains natural needs for food and water. It is difficult to distinguish the stage of the disease, to determine at what point the patient went from a mild form of lethargic sleep to a severe one.

In a mild form, a person retains the ability to analyze, remember, perceive what is happening around. Although there is no reaction to what is happening. The body is immobilized, but the person breathes evenly, the body temperature is slightly lowered, the muscles are relaxed. The ability to chew and swallow also remains. The life of such people must be supported with the help of special care, giving them food and water through a tube.

With a complex form of lethargic sleep, the following are characteristic:

pale skin;
blood pressure decreases;
muscles and blood vessels atrophy;
light, barely noticeable breathing;
the pulse is practically not palpable;
some reflexes are missing;
no need for food and water;
body temperature drops dramatically.

As a result, there is dehydration of the body, a violation of metabolic processes, and mental development is suspended.

How is it different from a coma

After self-awakening, which can last from several hours, days, weeks to decades, the patient ages dramatically and there is a chance of death for real. This condition is very similar to a coma. Only, being in a lethargic sleep, the sleeper does not experience pathological changes, the brain, the central nervous system are not damaged. Even after waking up from a long sleep, a person feels healthy.

The difference is that a person in this state breathes on his own, his body works in slow motion. The main thing is to ensure proper care:

feeding;
washing;
turning the body over to avoid bedsores;
elimination of waste products.

To bring a patient out of a coma, special medication is needed, and special equipment is used to keep him alive.

Unlike a coma, after which the patient risks remaining disabled for life, people awakened from lethargy, regardless of the duration of sleep, feel completely healthy.

This type of sleep is dangerous, as many people confuse it with death. Therefore, history knows cases of people buried alive. Modern medicine is able to distinguish lethargic sleep from death with the help of the latest diagnostic manipulations and equipment. For this, the following actions are carried out:

Determine the work of the brain and heart with the help of ECG and ECF. Thanks to this, even the weak work of these organs can be recorded.
Careful examination to determine indicators, signs of death: cadaveric spots on the skin, stiff body, putrefaction.
Conduct blood tests, check its circulation.

These and other manipulations are capable of fixing even the slightest signs of life, making it clear that a person has fallen into a lethargic sleep.

Hypotheses for the occurrence of lethargy

To date, there are three theories of the occurrence of such a state:

The causative agent is an infection that, with the help of viral particles, bacteria, negatively affects the central nervous system, provoking inflammatory processes in it.
Protective reaction of the brain to overexcitation, a strong shock.
Disorders associated with the aging gene.

This disease is not fully understood, so there are no exact facts to help determine the causes of its occurrence.

Phobias associated with illness

An obsessive fear of death or the fear of being buried alive, many people have today. These fears are fueled by information from occult sources and fiction. This fear is called thanatophobia. It is obsessive, uncontrollable, inexplicable and belongs to anxiety disorders.

People suffering from such a phobia are constantly afraid, even if there is no reason for it. Also, people are characterized by impressionability, suspiciousness, anxiety and self-doubt. Phobias are classified as mental disorders that require specialized diagnosis and treatment.

Known instances of sinking into lethargy

There are cases in history when famous people suddenly fell into a lethargic sleep and also suddenly awakened from it:

The 14th century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca suffered a serious illness at the age of 40, after which he fell into a state of lethargy for several days. Since he did not show any signs of life, people assumed that he was dead. He woke up during his funeral, after which he lived for another 30 years.
A 34-year-old woman who fell asleep for 20 years after a quarrel with her husband is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
An Indian official fell into this state for 7 years, after an unexpected, for reasons unknown to him, removal from office. The revivals were triggered by malaria. At first he opened his eyes, after a while he was able to sit on his own, his sight returned. Completely got rid of the effects of prolonged sleep after a year.
It is believed that the famous Russian writer Nikolai Gogol was buried alive. He suffered from mental illness, was prone to nervous breakdowns, and after the death of his wife, lost his mind and soon died. He was buried on the third day after his death. When opening the grave, after a while, it was found that his head was turned, so many people started talking about the writer's lethargic dream.

There are many stories when a person could fall into such a dream at home, after waking up they came to their senses. Someone died almost immediately, and someone lived for some time. Some were buried alive, not having time to save after burial.

Features and types of encephalitis Ekonomo

Frequent outbreaks of this disease were recorded during the First World War. Most often, it ended in death. Economo's encephalitis is rare these days.

The disease is divided into 2 types:

chronic;
spicy.

During the acute course of the disease, inflammation of the brain occurs. In the chronic stage, serious brain disorders occur, changes in the psyche are observed.

The causative agents have not yet been identified. It is believed that it is transmitted by airborne droplets. During the course of the disease, symptoms such as:

increase in body temperature;
headache;
blurred vision;
nausea;
vomit;
excessive sleepiness;
insomnia;
and other sleep disorders.

After waking up, the patient can fall asleep immediately, despite discomfort, extraneous noise and inappropriate conditions. It is almost impossible to distinguish the stages of the disease. Forecasts for recovery are unfavorable, as a rule, a person dies, that is, a fatal outcome.

Interesting facts about lethargic sleep

Many myths and legends are associated with lethargic sleep. A person's fear of him gives rise to numerous untrue stories that frighten and alarm suspicious people. Not fully understood disease gives it a mystical and frightening character.

Interesting facts about lethargic sleep:

In the 18th century, when doctors officially announced this disease, panic seized Europe. Fear of being buried alive with the feat of people to the publication of numerous laws. They forbade the burial of the deceased before the prescribed time, and in some coffins they built bells or pipes that came to the surface. This allowed the awakened person to reach out to the outside world.
In Russia, especially in the outback, this disease was considered diabolical. Therefore, a priest was called for treatment, who performed the rites of the exorcism of the Devil (exorcism).
It is believed that in order to enter such a state, the body needs a strong shock, a shock, it must be exhausted. In this case, the applied term "lethargy" is considered a protective reaction that helps a person survive in adverse conditions.

It is interesting that earlier they tried to wake the sleeping person in various cruel ways. For this, ice water, boiling water, electricity and many other pain effects were used. But all this did not give a positive result.

Diagnosis and treatment of pathological sleep

Although such a phenomenon as lethargic sleep remains a mystery, modern technologies, new knowledge and research in the field of medicine make it possible to accurately determine the patient's condition. Namely, to identify is death, a clinical condition or a lethargic dream. The main thing is an individual approach to each individual case.

For this, a special examination is carried out to determine biological death, when there are no signs of life. Either the identification of brain activity, the work of the heart is made, the pulse is felt, the presence of breathing. Therefore, the fear of being buried alive has no basis. Today, even an inexperienced doctor or intern is able to recognize a person has died or fallen into an unconscious state of sleep.

Such a person does not need special treatment, because. care is required, including the following procedures:

Surveillance of relatives.
Provision of suitable living conditions to minimize the side effects that may occur after waking up: put in a clean, separate room, well ventilated, clean regularly, feed, hygiene procedures. It is also necessary to monitor the temperature regime in the room, to prevent hypothermia or overheating of the body.
Talk to the sleeper. Read, sing, tell him about what is happening around, try to make his existence filled with positive emotions.
In case of a decrease in pressure, caffeine injections are made, immunotherapy is carried out.

In some cases, sleeping pills are used to wake up. First, sleeping pills are administered intravenously, and then stimulants. This method has a short-term effect, as the sleeper wakes up for 10 minutes, and then turns off again.

In the event of deep sleep, it is necessary to contact a therapist or physiologist who understands the difference between liturgical sleep and coma, which is a danger to the life of the sleeper. To date, no effective methods of treating the disease have been found. As a preventive measure, experts recommend avoiding stressful situations and leading a healthy lifestyle.

The burning mystery of lethargic sleep remains unsolved. Today, quantum physics is approaching to reveal its nature.

Non-fabulous affliction

Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Dead Princess... These characters have a lot in common. An evil, envious stepmother, exile from home, wandering through a terrible dark forest, and to top it all off - a poisoned apple. However, in her crystal coffin, the unfortunate woman does not decompose, as it should be for the deceased, but seems to be sleeping.

She is rescued by a handsome prince. In a fairy tale, his kiss performs a miracle, but in reality, an impulse from the outside is important - a touch, a blow, a pain sensation. Awakening is as sudden as falling into a catatonic state - this is how doctors call spontaneous stupor, when all reactions in the body slow down, but do not stop, and the person becomes immobile. This oblivion can go on for days, or even years.

Stories of those who fell asleep in a lethargic sleep and were buried alive have been passed from mouth to mouth since prehistoric times.

The first documentary evidence comes from 1672. The Cretan poet Epimenides quarreled with his relatives, offended by the underestimation of his work. He moved into a cave and fell asleep... for 57 years. (Modern doctors believe that the period of hibernation is exaggerated.)

In Russia, a lethargic dream from time immemorial was considered a devilish obsession and was called a sleeper. If someone fell ill with this rare disease, a priest was invited to the house, who read prayers and sprinkled the hut and the patient with holy water, and relatives asked God to return the soul of the unfortunate.

Our ancestors believed that in a dream the human soul temporarily leaves the body and travels to other worlds. But there is a danger that she will fly too far, get lost and not find her way back. Satan knocks her off the true path, sending delusions. The journey is so dangerous that one may not wake up at all. An intermediate state between the worlds is a lethargic dream, when it is not too late to fix everything with the help of prayer.

Nowadays, the risk of being buried alive is practically zero. Doctors believe that even in the most severe cases, lethargic sleep and death are two completely different conditions, and only a very inattentive person can confuse them.

If you look closely, the lethargic has noticeably uniform breathing and twitching of the eyelids. Skin color is normal. The pulse is felt, sometimes slow.

Poet Epimenides fell asleep for 57 years

And only in very rare cases, the pulse becomes barely noticeable, breathing is superficial, and the skin is pale and cold. But even in this case, the reaction of the pupils to pain persists; when exposed to electric current, the muscles contract; electrocardiograms and electroencephalograms record the activity of the heart and brain.

It has little in common with ordinary sleep. Lethargy can be shaken, poured with cold water, put an alarm clock to your ear - it's useless. He does not respond to calls or touches.

The causes of lethargy are different - for example, a mental disorder or a brain tumor. However, it always provokes a strong emotional shock. Those who go into the world of deep sleep are people who subconsciously want to escape from life's problems, psychologists say. That is why women are more susceptible to it, more often than not at a young age. Headache, lethargy, weakness are harbingers of falling into a lethargic state.

living corpses

Academician I.P. Pavlov described the sick Ivan Kuzmich Kachalkin, who slept for 22 years - from 1896 to 1918. The cause of lethargy, as often happens, turned out to be psychogenic: the patient was a zealous monarchist and fell into a state of hibernation after the news of the assassination of Alexander II.

According to the description of Academician Pavlov, he "lay like a living corpse without the slightest voluntary movement and without a single word." He was fed with a tube. He eventually began to make independent movements, get up to use the toilet and even eat without help, but he gave the impression of a living plant. Doctors believed that his dementia was a consequence of a severe form of schizophrenia. But they turned out to be wrong.

Shortly before his death, Kachalkin came to his senses and told the doctors: all these years he "understood what was happening around him, but he felt a terrible, irresistible heaviness in his muscles, so that it was even difficult for him to breathe."

A new shock brought Kachalkin out of his stupor: he heard the conversation of the hospital staff about the execution of the family of Nicholas II. He did not have long to live: an impressionable patient died in September 1918 from heart failure.

Another story happened in the Kazakh city of Tselinograd (now Astana) at a school literature lesson. The teacher made a remark to the student, and she began to cry. Bloody tears. The girl was urgently hospitalized. In the hospital, she became worse: her arms and legs were numb, her eyes were closed, her breath was almost not caught, her facial features were sharpened.

What to do? And then the weekend, and the examination was postponed until Monday. The drunk orderlies, who considered the patient dead, took her to the morgue. There, the poor fellow came to her senses from a painful shock, when the on-duty pathologists proceeded to ... her autopsy. The girl survived, but she had to see a psychiatrist for years.

The case of the longest officially recorded lethargic sleep, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, occurred in 1954 with Nadezhda Lebedina, who was born in 1920 in the village of Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk region. After a quarrel with her husband, she fell asleep for 20 years and woke up again only in 1974. At the same time, the woman did not believe that many years had passed: for her, a quarrel had just occurred.

The case with the storekeeper of the Grodno regional food base Granatkin seems completely fantastic. Having quarreled with a friend, he received a strong blow to the head. The attacker considered Granatkin dead and buried the "corpse" in the snow.

After 22 days, lumberjacks who stumbled upon him took a terrible find to the morgue. However, the frozen body was so hard that the autopsy was postponed until morning. In the morning, the pathologist noticed that the pupils of the eyes react to light, the nails turned slightly pink when pressed. At the same time, Granatkin was not breathing, his pulse was not felt. And the doctor diagnosed: a deep lethargic sleep due to a blow to the head. The patient was brought to his senses, and the whole story can be considered a real miracle.

Often, after a lethargic sleep, a person claims to have acquired unusual abilities. Nazira Rustemova fell asleep at the age of four and slept for 16 years. Woke up August 29, 1985 from a phone call. In her own words, it was not a dream: “I lived there,” Nazira claimed.

In 2001, Nazira gave a long interview to journalists. At that time she was 36 years old

She communicated with her ancestor, who was a granddaughter in the fourteenth generation: “He was the greatest mystic, scientist, spiritual healer and poet of the 12th century,” Nazira said. - His name is Ahmed Yasawi, and a large temple was built in his honor in Turkestan. With him I walked through the gardens and lakes. It was very good there."

Returning to normal life, Nazira gained the ability to predict the future, see the internal organs, hear the conversations of people a few kilometers away, and see what is happening behind the blank walls. Over time, these skills began to weaken, and attempts to activate them caused headaches, fainting, nosebleeds.

Interestingly, some catatonics sleep sitting up and even standing up. The story of a young woman who suddenly fell into such a stupor formed the basis of the feature film "Miracle", the heroine of which stood like a statue for several months.

This real story, which happened in 1956 in Kuibyshev (now Samara), was included in the textbooks of psychiatry under the title "Zoya's Standing" - after the girl's name. Panic began in the city, there was talk of the end of the world, and the case was taken under the control of the KGB.

Zoya woke up suddenly, almost did not remember anything. Subsequently, it turned out that she perfectly heard everything that was happening around and even reacted to it: Zoya was convinced that she was talking to people, went to work and lived an ordinary life. And it was not nonsense: a huge number of details converged. The case was classified.

Is it an infection?

“Nothing out of the ordinary happened,” said Vladimir Vorobyov, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Leading Researcher at the Center for Mental Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. - Catatonic syndrome, which sometimes manifests itself as tetanus, is usually one of the varieties of acute reactive schizophrenia. In the 50s and 60s of the last century, this was a very common disorder: there were entire wards in psychiatric institutions. Today, they have learned to treat this pathology, so it occurs much less frequently.”

Zoya subsequently got sick a lot and often, fainted, could no longer work, and died a few years later.

This is a common feature of almost all lethargics, which completely refutes the assertion that due to a slowdown in metabolism, they do not age and time seems to stop for them. In fact, due to dehydration, muscle atrophy, sluggish work of internal organs and blood circulation, all their vital processes, on the contrary, suffer; these people come to themselves as profoundly disabled.

Some doctors consider lethargy a metabolic disorder, others a sleep disorder.

English doctors Russell Dale and his colleague Andrew Church proposed their hypothesis. Comparing the case histories, they found that many of the lethargics often had a sore throat, which means they were susceptible to a bacterial infection. It also turned out that streptococcus bacteria and their close relatives diplococci in all lethargics remain highly active, mutating over the years.

At the time of Gogol, they tried to bring bloodletting out of a heavy oblivion and put leeches, which only aggravated the situation of patients: after all, those who are in lethargy already have very low blood pressure.

At the end of the 1930s, a new method of treatment was proposed: simultaneous intravenous administration of a sleeping pill to the patient, and then an exciting drug, after which the person came to his senses for five to ten minutes. But the effect was short-lived. For awakening, hypnosis sessions are used, as well as injections of psychotropic drugs. However, a universal remedy has not yet been found.

Can prophetic dreams be treated?

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Leading Researcher of the Physical Institute. PN Lebedev RAS Mikhail Mensky believes that quantum mechanics can solve the riddle of lethargic sleep. “Our consciousness is a property of the brain to perceive reality as the only one that exists. Quantum physics claims that there are an infinite number of them, explains Mensky. “When we are unconscious, our brain works in a completely different way.”

However, there are still more questions than answers. What is the nature of prophetic dreams and other "unconscious" visual sensations? What is clairvoyance and telepathy? What happens to consciousness at this time? If it turns off, then what comes to replace it? From the same series of riddles of lethargy.

“If we consider our world as a quantum one, where many realities coexist, we can assume that when consciousness is temporarily turned off, we travel to parallel realities,” says the professor. - Our consciousness limits the possibilities of such perception, as blinders prevent a horse from seeing everything that happens around him. Consciousness is our blinders, without which we might go crazy. After all, even a brief glimpse beyond the horizon of our consciousness sometimes causes fear and bewilderment. Thus, it is not other worlds that appear to us in dreams and unusual states of consciousness that are illusory, on the contrary, the illusion is the belief that our reality is the only one and there are no others.

Many scientists and creative personalities are familiar with the state of insight, which often comes in a dream, recalls Mikhail Mensky. If we take into account quantum physics, then nothing surprising. After all, non-logical cognition uses a much wider database than logical cognition.

Moreover, due to the reversibility of the equations of quantum mechanics in the state of "unconscious" there is access not only to all meanings, but also to all times. We are able to look into the future and see all its options. The same with the past.

“Lethargic sleep should not be feared like the plague, but studied and used to expand the boundaries of perception of the world,” Mensky believes. - The abilities dormant in each of us can make it possible to travel to parallel worlds without driving oneself into a trance or state of drug intoxication. The man of the future will have such an expanded consciousness. He will be able to draw any information in other realities, just as today we remember last year's vacation or a recently read book.

Natalia Leskova