Known cases of lethargic sleep. Lethargy is a dream similar to death. Concert at the Morgue

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

Causes.

Transferred severe emotional stress;

Some features of the human psyche;

Head injuries, severe brain bruises, car accidents;

The stress of losing loved ones.

There are cases when people were introduced into a state of lethargy through hypnotic influence.

Some doctors believe that the cause is a metabolic disorder, while others see here a kind of sleep pathology.

Possible Complications. If the immovable state lasted for a long time, then the person returns from it, having received such complications as vascular atrophy, bedsores, septic lesions of the bronchi and kidneys.

Symptoms. Lethargic sleep is characterized by:

lack of response to any external stimuli,

complete immobility,

a sharp slowdown in all vital processes.

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

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

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

Diagnostics. Many are afraid of being buried alive, but modern medicine knows how to prove whether a person is alive. To do this, the doctor electrophysiological studies of the heart and brain, so you can learn about the work 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 mortis, cadaveric spots. If there are no signs described above, they can make a small incision, examine the blood, 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 relatives and friends. No need for medicines; food, water, vitamins, it is administered in dissolved form. The most important thing in this state is the care that relatives must carry out: hygiene procedures, compliance with the temperature regime.

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

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

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

2. Drink a sufficient amount of liquid (preferably plain boiled water);

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

4. Avoid sleep deprivation and do not sleep too long;

5. Do not use drugs and alcoholic beverages at the same time.

Lethargic sleep is a morbid condition of people, which some doctors consider special. Such a phenomenon resembles a long and deep rest of a person, which can last several years.

Clinical sleep is characterized by a lack of response to any stimuli (noise, light, cold), complete immobility of a person, as well as a slowdown in all vital processes. As many videos show, cases of lethargic sleep are often recorded, while a person can oversleep for several days or even weeks.

And in exceptional cases, people can fall asleep for several years. It is important to note that sometimes a person uses hypnosis to fall into a lethargic sleep.

Scientists conducting research claim that the reasons why this condition develops are very different. Moreover, it depends on them how long a person’s rest can last. Often women fall into a lethargic sleep, who are often hysterical.

After all, severe stress, excessive emotionality and nervousness can easily cause this phenomenon. One case is known, which is now listed in the book of records: a woman had a big fight with her husband, after which she fell asleep for 20 years.

There have also been cases when people fell into a long sleep due to head injuries, after accidents (for example, car accidents), after the loss of a loved one. All these phenomena are characterized by strong emotions and stress.

British scientists believe that a sore throat is capable of causing lethargic sleep, since many people fell into it shortly after the discovery of the disease. However, this fact could not be officially registered, since no evidence could be found that in these cases the bacterium that causes sore throat is to blame.

As mentioned earlier, hypnosis can cause this phenomenon - there have often been cases when Indian yogis, while using the breathing slowing technique, fell into this state, which is considered artificial.

signs

Every person needs to know the signs of this condition, since it is quite difficult to distinguish a sleeping person from a dead person. The main symptoms of this condition include:

• imperceptible and very weak breathing;
• low body temperature;
• a barely perceptible heartbeat (usually it is 3 beats per minute).

After a person wakes up, he will quickly catch up with his age, and also instantly grow old.

In fact, it will be possible to distinguish such a state from the deceased if you carefully examine the sleeping person. As a rule, in this case, it is required to call an ambulance, which will examine the patient, and then correctly recognize the condition.

Only an experienced person can independently determine a lethargic dream, since he must take into account several signs of such a condition. Unfortunately, many perceive it as death.

Symptoms

All symptoms of this condition are quite specific. The consciousness of the patient during his development, as a rule, is preserved. Moreover, a person is able to remember all the events that occur around him, but he cannot react to them. In addition to death, this condition also needs to be distinguished from encephalitis and narcolepsy.

If the patient's condition is severe, it can cause the following symptoms:

• pale and cold skin;
• the pulse and respiration are hardly determined;
• pressure drop;
• lack of response even to strong stimuli;
• lack of pupillary response to light or any other stimulus.

For several days during a lethargic sleep, a person stops excreting urine and feces, and he also stops drinking and eating. In this case, he quickly loses weight and achieves dehydration. However, it will be possible to restore the normal state of the body only after waking up.

If the patient's condition is mild, then the clinical signs will be somewhat different. In this case, the symptoms are as follows:

• even breathing;
• eye rolling;
• making slow chewing movements;
• swallowing movements.

In other words, a person can perceive everything that happens around. If it is impossible to feed the patient, this is done using a special probe.

As a rule, the duration of such a condition in a mild and severe case is different. How much do people usually sleep? At home, this can last from 2-3 days to several weeks. Lethargic sleep can occur in a person of any age, but in childhood it is less common. Depending on age, the duration of rest may also be different.

How can lethargy be distinguished from death?

If a person is in lethargy, he absolutely does not have any reaction to any external stimuli. Even if the patient is conscious, because of this phenomenon, he will not even respond to serious stimuli, for example, pouring boiling water over him. In this case, the patient may experience movement of the pupils.

Sometimes, as the facts show, a person can observe a twitching of the body, which is caused by the influence of muscle current. When conducting an ECG, a heartbeat will be visible, and an electroencephalogram will be able to detect weak brain activity.

Usually, such symptoms are observed throughout the "lethargic" sleep, but sometimes they appear only after a couple of days, when the person's condition stabilizes and "gets used" to a long rest.

Attention! The life of such a person is the same as that of other people. For some time he sleeps deeply, and when awake he perceives any signals of heat, pain, light, but he cannot give a command to the body. That is why some people, after they wake up, can remember some information.

Now the differences between death and lethargic sleep in humans have become clear. It should be noted that the consequences of such a phenomenon are observed quite rarely. The most famous of them is dehydration and exhaustion of the body.

How is lethargy treated?

The treatment of lethargy remains a mystery to this day. Back in 1930, this method was used to wake up: first, a sleeping pill was administered intravenously to a person, and then an stimulant drug was administered in the same way.

This helped a person to go into himself for 10 minutes, which allowed doctors to assess the general state of health of the patient. Hypnosis is also quite effective as a treatment. After waking up, many patients claim that they have learned a new language or remembered other important information.

This is due to the fact that the brain, during a long rest, completely relaxed and began to absorb information from the outside.

Patients do not need to take medication or undergo inpatient treatment if their health condition is satisfactory. Otherwise, the restoration of health is carried out under the supervision of doctors.

Anyone can go into lethargy, so it is important to know how to distinguish this state from death and coma, and also why lethargic sleep can appear. All this will allow you to take the right measures to control a sleeping person, as well as provide first aid in case of deterioration in his health.

Evidence of this is the excavation of graves, where the dead lay in a coffin in unnatural poses, as if resisting something. During a lethargic sleep, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to determine and say with certainty whether a person is alive or has gone 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 the captivity of the grave. For example, the case of one artillery officer, who was thrown off by a horse and when he fell, he broke his head. The wound seemed to be harmless, they let him bleed, took measures to bring him to his senses, but all the efforts of the doctors were in vain, the man died, or rather, he was mistaken for the deceased. The weather was hot, so it was decided to hurry up with the funeral and not wait three days.

Two days after the funeral, many relatives of the deceased came to the cemetery. One of them cried out in horror when he saw that the ground on which he had just sat "moved". It was the grave of an officer. Without hesitation, the newcomers took up their shovels and dug out a shallow grave, somehow covered with earth. The “dead man” did not lie, 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 steps of people above his head. Thanks to the gravediggers, who carelessly filled the grave, air entered through the loose earth, which made it possible for the officer to receive some oxygen.

People can be 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 traces of moisture could be noticed on its surface.

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

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

An even longer sleep was known to academician I.P. Pavlov. For 25 years, a man lay in the clinic as a “living corpse”. He did not make a single movement, did not utter a single word from the age of 35 to the age of 60, when he gradually began to show normal motor activity, began to get up, speak, etc. The old man began to be asked what he felt during these long years, while lying "a living corpse." As it turned out, he heard a lot, understood, but could not move or speak. Pavlov explained this case by stagnant pathological inhibition of the motor cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. By 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 intact,” said Hans Jenkins, a Swiss neurosurgeon who flew to America to get acquainted with a recently recovered patient. “The 20-year-old beauty looks like an adult, but retained the intelligence and innocence of a 3-year-old child.” Greta is smart and a pretty fast learner. However, she absolutely does not know life. “Recently we went to the supermarket together,” says Greta's mother Doris. - I walked away literally for a minute, and when I returned, Greta was already heading for the exit with some guy. It turned out that he invited her to go to his house and have a lot of fun, and Greta willingly agreed. She could not even imagine what exactly was meant. After passing the test, Greta is now at school. Her teachers assure that the girl gets along remarkably well with classmates. How the life of the former sleeping beauty will turn out, the future will show ...

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 who is little familiar with medicine can take the sleeping person for the dead. From here, probably, 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-dead-half-dead existence with the blood of living people.

Until the 18th century, plague epidemics periodically swept across medieval Europe. The most terrible was the "black death" of the XIV century, which claimed almost a quarter of the population of Europe. A merciless disease mowed down everyone indiscriminately. Every day, wagons loaded to the top with bodies took out a terrible load out of the city to the grave pits. The doors of the houses where the infection settled were marked with red crosses. People abandoned their relatives 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. Many cases of premature burials are known. The degree of their reliability is different.

1865 - 5-year-old Max Hoffmann fell ill with cholera, whose family had a farm near a small town in Wisconsin (America). The urgently called doctor could not reassure the parents: in his opinion, there was no hope 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 turned over in his grave and seemed to be trying to get out of there. She saw him fold his hands and place them under his right cheek. Mother woke up from her heartbreaking scream. She began to beg her husband to dig a coffin with a child, he refused. Mr. Hoffmann was convinced that her sleep was the result of a nervous shock and that removing the body from the grave would only increase her suffering. But the next night the dream was repeated, and this time it was impossible to convince the excited mother.

Hoffmann sent his eldest son for 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 from a nearby tree. When they finally dug up the coffin and opened it, they saw that Max was lying on his right side, as his mother had dreamed, with folded arms under his right cheek. The child did not show any signs of life, but the father took the little 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, whom he had declared dead two days earlier. More than an hour later, his efforts were rewarded: the baby's eyelid twitched. Brandy was used, sacks of heated salt were placed under the body and hands. Little by little, signs of improvement began to appear. Within a week, Max had fully recovered from his fantastic adventure. He lived to be 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 you know, lethargic sleep of natural, and not traumatic or other origin, as a rule, develops in hysterical patients. In some cases, even healthy people, not at all hysterics, using special psychotechnics, can cause similar states in themselves. For example, Hindu yogis, using the techniques of self-hypnosis and breath retention known to them, can voluntarily bring themselves into a state of the deepest and most prolonged sleep, similar to lethargy or catalepsy.

1968 - Englishwoman Emma Smith set the world record for the longest burial alive: she spent 101 days in a coffin! True ... not in a lethargic dream and without the use of any psychotechnics, she simply lay in a buried coffin in full consciousness. 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 the phone installed in the coffin ...

Society today is accustomed to treating myths, legends, 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 the representatives of the ancient Civilization, possessing parapsychological abilities, went to the caves of the Himalayas and entered the state of Somati (when the Soul, leaving the body and leaving it in a "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 Human Gene Pool. According to scientists, sleep is the best medicine. Indeed, the kingdom of Morpheus saves people from many stresses, diseases , and simply relieves fatigue.

It is believed that the duration of a normal person's sleep 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 have always been 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, fell seriously ill at the age of 40. Once he lost consciousness, he was considered dead and were going to be buried. Fortunately, the law of that time forbade burying the dead earlier than a day after death. Waking up almost at his grave, Petrarch said that he felt great. After that, he lived another 30 years.

1838 - in one of the English villages an incredible event occurred. During the funeral, when the coffin with the deceased was lowered into the grave and began to be buried, some kind of obscure sound came from there. By the time the frightened cemetery workers came to their senses, dug the coffin and opened it, it was already too late: under the lid they saw a face frozen in horror and despair. And the torn shroud and abraded hands showed that help was late ...

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

The fears of the great writer Nikolai Gogol of being buried alive are well known. The final mental breakdown happened to the writer after the death of the woman 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 the body protected the writer too well: he fell asleep in a sound 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 on its side, and the matter in the coffin was torn ...

In England, there is still a law according to which all mortuary refrigerators must have a bell with a rope so that the revived "dead" can call for help with a bell ringing. In the late 1960s, they created the first apparatus there, which made it possible to capture the smallest electrical activity of the heart. During the testing of the device in the morgue, a living girl was found among the corpses.

The causes of lethargy are not yet known to medicine. Medicine describes cases of people falling into such a dream due to intoxication, large blood loss, hysterical seizure, fainting. It is interesting that when life was threatened (bombing during the war), those who slept in a lethargic sleep woke up, could walk, and after shelling they fell asleep again. The mechanism of aging in those who have fallen asleep is very slow. For 20 years of sleep, they do not change outwardly, but then, in a state of wakefulness, they catch up with their biological age in 2–3 years, turning into old people before our eyes.

Nazira Rustemova from Kazakhstan, as a 4-year-old child, first "fell into a state similar to delirium, and then fell into a lethargic sleep." The doctors of the regional hospital considered her dead, and soon the parents buried the girl alive. She was saved only by the fact that, according to Muslim custom, the body of the deceased is not buried in the ground, but wrapped in a shroud and buried in a burial house. Nazira stayed 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 again came to her senses only in 1974. Doctors recognized her as absolutely healthy.

There is another record, for some reason not included in the Guinness Book of Records. Augustine Leggard fell asleep after the stress of childbirth... But she could open her mouth very slowly when she was being fed. 22 years have passed, and the sleeping Augustine remained just as young. But then the woman started up and spoke: “Frederic, 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, like two drops similar to herself ... Soon, however, time took its toll: the awakened woman began to age rapidly, a year later she had already turned into an old woman and died five years later.

There are cases when a lethargic dream arose 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 really imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils do not react, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, strong pain irritations do not cause a reaction, reflexes are absent. The best guarantee against lethargy is a quiet life and the absence of stress.

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.

Lethargic sleep is a condition in which a person becomes motionless, and all vital functions, although preserved, are noticeably reduced: the pulse and breathing become less frequent, the body temperature drops.

Patients with a mild form of lethargy look asleep - their heart beats at a normal rate, breathing remains even, only it is very difficult to wake them up. But severe forms are very similar to death - the heart beats at a speed of 2-3 beats per minute, the skin becomes pale and cold, breathing is not felt.

Buried alive

In 1772, the German Duke of Mecklenburg announced that it was forbidden to bury people in all his possessions earlier than three days after death. Soon a similar measure was adopted throughout Europe. The fact is that both the nobility and the representatives of the mob were very afraid of being buried alive.

Later, in the 19th century, coffin makers even began to develop special "safe coffins" in which a person buried by mistake could survive for some time and give a signal for help. The simplest design of such a coffin was a wooden box with a tube brought out. A priest visited the grave for several days after the funeral. His duty was to sniff at a pipe sticking out of the ground - in the absence of a smell of decomposition, the grave was supposed to be opened and checked whether the one who was buried in it was really dead. Sometimes a bell was hung from the pipe, with which a person could let know that he was alive.

More complex designs were provided with devices for supplying food and water. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, German doctor Adolf Gutsmon personally demonstrated his own invention. The extreme doctor was buried alive in a special coffin, where he was able to spend several hours and even dine on sausages and beer, which were served underground using a special device.

forget and fall asleep

But were there grounds for such fear? Unfortunately, cases when doctors took those who fell asleep in a lethargic sleep for the dead were not uncommon.

The victim of a "medical error" almost became a medieval poet Petrarch. The poet was seriously ill, and when he fell into a heavy oblivion, the doctors considered him dead. Petrarch woke up a day later, in the midst of preparations for the funeral, and he felt better than before he fell asleep. After this incident, he lived another 30 years.

Other cases of lethargy have also been described. For example, the famous Russian scientist, biologist Ivan Pavlov observed for many years peasant Kachalkin who overslept ... 22 years! Two decades later, Kachalkin came to his senses and said that while he was sleeping, he could hear the conversations of nurses and was partially aware of what was happening around him. A few weeks after his awakening, the man died of heart failure.

Other cases of lethargic sleep are described, and in the period from 1910 to 1930, almost an epidemic of lethargy began in Europe. Due to the increasing cases of lethargic sleep, people, as in the Middle Ages, began to be afraid of being buried by mistake. This condition is called taphophobia.

The fears of the great

The fear of being buried alive pursued not only ordinary people, but also famous personalities. Taphophobia suffered the first American President George Washington. He repeatedly asked his loved ones that the funeral take place no earlier than two days after his death. I experienced a similar fear poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, and inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel.

When the grave of the writer was opened for reburial, they found that the body was lying in a coffin in an unnatural position, with its head turned to one side. Similar cases of the position of the bodies were known before, and each time they suggested thoughts of being buried alive. However, modern experts have given this phenomenon a completely logical explanation. The fact is that the boards of the coffin rot unevenly, fail, which violates the position of the skeleton.

What is the reason?

But where does the lethargic dream come from? What causes the human body to fall into a state of deep oblivion? Some experts believe that lethargic sleep is caused by severe stress.

Allegedly, faced with an experience that the body cannot bear, it turns on a defensive reaction in the form of a lethargic sleep.

Another hypothesis suggests that lethargic sleep is caused by a virus unknown to science - this is precisely what explains the sudden increase in cases of lethargic sleep in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century.
Scientists have discovered another interesting pattern - those who fell into lethargy were prone to frequent sore throats and suffered this disease shortly before they forgot about a heavy sleep. This gave impetus to the third version, according to which lethargic sleep is caused by a mutated staphylococcus that affected the brain tissue. However, which of these versions is correct, scientists have yet to figure out.

But the causes of some conditions similar to lethargic sleep are known. Too deep and prolonged sleep can occur in response to taking certain drugs, including antiviral agents, it is a consequence of certain forms of encephalitis and a sign of narcolepsy, a serious disease of the nervous system. Sometimes a state similar to true lethargy becomes a harbinger of coma with head injuries, severe poisoning and large blood loss.

Lethargic sleep is an unexplored problem. Some of those who fall into this state come back to life after some time, while others do not. I think this is due to diseases of the nervous system. And the main cause of this disease is stress.