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

Causes.

Suffered severe emotional stress;

Some features of the human psyche;

Head injuries severe bruises brain, car accidents;

Stress from losing loved ones.

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

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

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

Symptoms Lethargic sleep is characterized by:

lack of response to any external stimuli,

complete immobility,

a sharp slowdown in all life processes.

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

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

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

Diagnostics. Many people are afraid of being buried alive, but modern medicine knows how to prove whether a person is alive. To do this, the doctor conducts electrophysiological studies of the heart and brain, 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, cadaveric spots. If there are no signs described above, they can make a small incision, examine the blood, and check its circulation.

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

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

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

1. Avoid direct exposure sun rays in hot and humid weather;

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

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

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

5. Do not use at the same time medicines and alcoholic drinks.

Lethargy comes from the Greek lethe "oblivion" and argia "inaction." This is not just one of the varieties of sleep, but a real disease. In a person in lethargic sleep, all vital processes of the body slow down - the heartbeat becomes rare, breathing is shallow and unnoticeable, and there is almost no reaction to external stimuli.

How long can lethargic sleep last?

Lethargic sleep can be light or heavy. In the case of the first, the person is noticeably breathing, he retains a partial perception of the world - the patient looks like a deeply sleeping person. In severe form, it becomes like a dead person - the body becomes cold and pale, the pupils stop reacting to light, breathing becomes so invisible that even with the help of a mirror it is difficult to determine its presence. Such a patient begins to lose weight, and biological secretions stop. 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 chemical analysis blood. What can we say about the early eras, when humanity did not know the concept of “lethargy”, and any person who was cold and unresponsive to stimuli would have been considered dead.

The length of lethargic sleep is unpredictable, as is the length of coma. An attack can last from several hours to decades. There is a well-known case observed by Academician Pavlov. He came across a patient who “slept through” the revolution. Kachalkin was in lethargy 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.”

Reasons

Despite the case described above, lethargy is most common in women. Especially those who are prone to hysteria. A person may fall asleep after a strong emotional stress, as for example, happened to Nadezhda Lebedina in 1954. After a quarrel with her husband, she fell asleep and woke up only 20 years later. Moreover, according to the recollections of her loved ones, she reacted to what was happening emotionally. True, the patient herself does not remember this.

In addition to stress, schizophrenia can cause lethargy. For example, the Kachalkin we mentioned suffered from it. In such cases, according to doctors, sleep can become natural reaction for illness.

In some cases, lethargy resulted from serious injuries head, in case of severe poisoning, significant blood loss and physical exhaustion. Norwegian resident Augustine Leggard fell asleep after giving birth for 22 years.

Can lead to lethargic sleep side effects and overdose with strong medicines, for example, interferon - an antiviral and antitumor drug. In this case, to bring the patient out of lethargy, it is enough to stop taking the medicine.

IN lately opinions are increasingly heard about viral reasons lethargy. Thus, doctors of medical sciences Russell Dale and Andrew Church, having studied the history of twenty patients with lethargy, identified a pattern that many of the patients, before “falling asleep,” had a sore throat. Further searches bacterial infection allowed us to identify rare form streptococci in all these patients. Based on this, scientists decided that the bacteria that caused sore throat had changed their properties, overcome immune protection and caused inflammation of the midbrain. Such damage to the nervous system could provoke an attack of lethargic sleep.

Taphophobia

With the awareness 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. She's in different times such people suffered famous personalities, like Schopenhauer, Nobel, Gogol, Tsvetaeva and Edgar Allan Poe. The latter dedicated many works to his fear. His story “Buried Alive” describes many cases of lethargic sleep that ended in tears: “I looked closely; and by the will of the invisible, who was still clutching my wrist, all the graves on the face of the earth were opened before me. But alas! Not all of them fell into a sound sleep; there were many millions more others who did not sleep forever; I saw that many, seemingly at rest in the world, in one way or another changed those frozen, uncomfortable positions in which they were interred.”

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 delay 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. Since the 19th century, safe coffins began to be produced, equipped with a means of escape for those “accidentally buried.” Emmanuel Nobel made for himself one of the first crypts with ventilation and alarm (a bell that was driven by a rope installed in the coffin). Subsequently, inventors Franz Western and Johan Taberneg invented protection for the bell from accidental ringing, equipped the coffin with a mosquito net, and installed drainage systems to avoid flooding with rainwater.

Safety coffins still exist today. Modern model invented and patented in 1995 by Italian Fabrizio Caseli. His project included an alarm, an intercom-like communication system, a flashlight, a breathing apparatus, a heart monitor, and a pacemaker.

Why do sleepers not age?

Paradoxically, in the case of long-term lethargy, a person practically does not change. He doesn't even age. In the cases described above, both women, Nadezhda Lebedina and Augustine Leggard, corresponded to their previous ages during sleep. But as soon as their lives acquired a normal rhythm, the years took their toll. Thus, Augustine aged sharply during the first year after awakening, and Nadezhda’s body caught up with its “fifty dollars” in less than six months. The doctors recall: “What we were able to observe was unforgettable! She grew old before our eyes. Every day I added new wrinkles and gray hair.”

What is the secret of the youth of those who sleep, and how the body so quickly regains the lost years, scientists have yet to find out.

Lethargic sleep is a painful condition in people that some doctors consider special. This phenomenon resembles a long and deep rest person, which can last several years.

Clinical sleep is characterized by a lack of reaction to any stimuli (noise, light, cold), complete immobility of a person, as well as a slowdown in all vital functions. important processes. As many videos show, cases of lethargic sleep are often recorded, and a person can sleep 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. Women who are often subjected to hysterics often fall into a lethargic sleep.

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

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

British scientists believe that sore throat can cause lethargic sleep, since many people fell into it soon after the discovery of the disease. However, this fact could not be officially registered, since it was not possible to find evidence 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

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

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

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

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

Only an experienced person can independently determine lethargic sleep, 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 patient's consciousness during its development, as a rule, is preserved. Moreover, a person is able to remember all the events that happen 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 may cause the following symptoms:

• pale and cold skin;
• it is difficult to determine the pulse and breathing;
• decrease in pressure;
• lack of reaction even to strong stimuli;
• lack of reaction of the pupils to light or any other irritant.

For several days during lethargic sleep, a person stops excreting urine and feces, and he also stops drinking and eating. In this case, he quickly loses weight and becomes dehydrated. However, restore normal condition the body will only succeed after waking up.

If the condition patient's lung, Then clinical signs will be slightly 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 him. If it is impossible to feed the patient, this is done using a special probe.

As a rule, the duration of this condition in mild and severe cases is different. How long 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 appears less frequently. Depending on age, the duration of rest may also vary.

How can you distinguish lethargy from death?

If a person is in lethargy, he has absolutely no reaction to any external stimuli. Even if the patient is conscious, because of this phenomenon he will not react even to serious irritants, for example, pouring boiling water on him. In this case, the patient may experience movement of the pupils.

Sometimes, as facts show, a person may experience a twitching of the body, which is caused by the influence of muscle current. At conducting an ECG The heartbeat will be visible, and the electroencephalogram will reveal weak brain activity.

Typically, such symptoms are observed throughout the entire “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! Life for such a person goes the same way as for other people. For some time he sleeps deeply, and when awake he perceives any signals of heat, pain, light, but cannot give a command to the body. This is why some people can remember some information after they wake up.

Now the differences between death and lethargic sleep in humans have become clear. It is worth noting that the consequences of this phenomenon are observed quite rarely. The most famous of them is dehydration and exhaustion of the body.

How is lethargy treated?

The treatment for lethargy remains a mystery to this day. Back in 1930, this method was used to wake up: first, a sleeping pill was injected into a person intravenously, 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 general condition health of the patient. Hypnosis is also quite effective as a treatment. After awakening, many patients claim that they learned a new language or remembered other important information.

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

Take medications or carry out inpatient treatment patients are not required if their health condition is satisfactory. Otherwise, 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, as well as why lethargic sleep may occur. All this will allow us to accept correct measures to monitor a sleeping person, as well as provide first aid if his health deteriorates.

Lethargy comes from the Greek lethe "oblivion" and argia "inaction." This is not just one of the varieties of sleep, but a real disease. In a person in lethargic sleep, all vital processes of the body slow down - the heartbeat becomes rare, breathing is shallow and unnoticeable, and there is almost no reaction to external stimuli.

How long can lethargic sleep last?

Lethargic sleep can be light or heavy. In the case of the first, the person is noticeably breathing, he retains a partial perception of the world - the patient looks like a deeply sleeping person. In severe form, it becomes like a dead person - the body becomes cold and pale, the pupils stop reacting to light, breathing becomes so invisible that even with the help of a mirror it is difficult to determine its presence. Such a patient begins to lose weight, and biological secretions stop. 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 can we say about the early eras, when humanity did not know the concept of “lethargy”, and any person who was cold and unresponsive to stimuli would have been considered dead.

The length of lethargic sleep is unpredictable, as is the length of coma. An attack can last from several hours to decades. There is a well-known case observed by Academician Pavlov. He came across a patient who “slept through” the revolution. Kachalkin was in lethargy 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.”

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, for example, happened to Nadezhda Lebedina in 1954. After a quarrel with her husband, she fell asleep and woke up only 20 years later. Moreover, according to the recollections of her loved ones, she reacted to what was happening emotionally. True, the patient herself does not remember this.

In addition to stress, schizophrenia can cause lethargy. For example, the Kachalkin we mentioned suffered from it. In such cases, according to doctors, sleep can become a natural reaction to the illness.

In some cases, lethargy occurred as a result of serious head injuries, severe poisoning, significant blood loss and physical exhaustion. Norwegian resident Augustine Leggard fell asleep after giving birth for 22 years.

Side effects and overdose of strong medications, for example, interferon, an antiviral and antitumor 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 have increasingly been heard about viral causes of lethargy. Thus, doctors of medical sciences Russell Dale and Andrew Church, having studied the history of twenty patients with lethargy, identified a pattern that many of the patients, before “falling asleep,” had a sore throat. Further searches for bacterial infection revealed a rare form of streptococci in all these patients. Based on this, scientists decided that the bacteria that caused sore throat changed their properties, overcame the immune defense and caused inflammation of the midbrain. Such damage to the nervous system could provoke an attack of lethargic sleep.

Taphophobia

With the awareness 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. Such famous personalities as Schopenhauer, Nobel, Gogol, Tsvetaeva and Edgar Poe suffered from it at different times. The latter dedicated many works to his fear. His story “Buried Alive” describes many cases of lethargic sleep that ended in tears: “I looked closely; and by the will of the invisible, who was still clutching my wrist, all the graves on the face of the earth were opened before me. But alas! Not all of them fell into a sound sleep; there were many millions more others who did not sleep forever; I saw that many, seemingly at rest in the world, in one way or another changed those frozen, uncomfortable positions in which they were interred.”

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 delay 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. Since the 19th century, safe coffins began to be produced, equipped with a means of escape for those “accidentally buried.” Emmanuel Nobel made for himself one of the first crypts with ventilation and alarm (a bell that was driven by a rope installed in the coffin). Subsequently, inventors Franz Western and Johan Taberneg invented protection for the bell from accidental ringing, equipped the coffin with a mosquito net, and installed drainage systems to avoid flooding with rainwater.

Safety coffins still exist today. The modern model was invented and patented in 1995 by Italian Fabrizio Caseli. His project included an alarm, an intercom-like communication system, a flashlight, a breathing apparatus, a heart monitor, and a pacemaker.

Why do sleepers not age?

Paradoxically, in the case of long-term lethargy, a person practically does not change. He doesn't even age. In the cases described above, both women, Nadezhda Lebedina and Augustine Leggard, corresponded to their previous ages during sleep. But as soon as their lives acquired a normal rhythm, the years took their toll. Thus, Augustine aged sharply during the first year after awakening, and Nadezhda’s body caught up with its “fifty dollars” in less than six months. The doctors recall: “What we were able to observe was unforgettable! She grew old before our eyes. Every day I added new wrinkles and gray hair.”

What is the secret of the youth of those who sleep, and how the body so quickly regains the lost years, scientists have yet to find out.

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

However, there were cases when it was possible to escape from grave captivity. For example, the case of an artillery officer who was thrown by a horse and broke his head in the fall. The wound seemed to be harmless, they bled him, they took measures to bring him to his senses, but all the efforts of the doctors were in vain, the man died, or rather, he was mistaken for dead. The weather was hot, so it was decided to hurry up with the funeral and not wait three days.

Two days after the funeral, many relatives of the deceased came to the cemetery. One of them screamed in horror when he saw that the ground on which he had just been sitting “moved.” This was the grave of an officer. Without hesitation, those who came took up shovels and dug up a shallow grave, somehow covered with earth. The “dead man” was not lying down, but half-sitting in the coffin; the lid was torn off and slightly raised. After the “second birth,” the officer was taken to the hospital, where he said that, having regained consciousness, he heard the footsteps of people overhead. Thanks to the gravediggers, who carelessly filled the grave, air entered through the loose soil, which made it possible for the officer to receive some oxygen.

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

Not the slightest breathing noise was heard, but in the region of the heart, auscultation revealed a barely noticeable intermittent sound. The woman had been in a similar, apparently lifeless state for 36 hours. When examining intermittent current, Rosenthal found that the muscles of the face and limbs contracted. The woman came to her senses after 12 hours of faradization. Two years later, she was alive and well and told Rosenthal that at the beginning of the attack she was unaware of anything, and then heard talk about her death, but could not help herself.

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

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

In America in 1996 after the 17th summer dream Greta Stargle from Denver, Colorado regained consciousness. “An innocent child in the body of a luxurious woman” is what doctors call Greta. The fact is that, as journalists reported, in 1979, 3-year-old Greta was in a car accident. Grandparents died, and Greta fell asleep for... 17 years. “Miss Stargle’s brain turned out to be absolutely undamaged,” noted Swiss neurosurgeon Hans Jenkins, who flew to America to meet the patient who had recently regained consciousness. - The 20-year-old beauty looks like an adult, but retains the intelligence and innocence of 3 year old child" Greta is smart and learns quite quickly. However, she has absolutely no knowledge of life. “We recently went to the supermarket together,” says Greta’s mother Doris. “I walked away literally for a minute, and when I returned, Greta was already heading towards the exit with some guy. It turned out that he invited her to go to his house and have a lot of fun, and Greta readily agreed. She couldn’t even imagine what exactly was meant.” Having passed the test, Greta is studying at school today. Her teachers assure that the girl gets along well with the kids in her class. The future will tell how the life of the former sleeping beauty will turn out...

During lethargic sleep, not only voluntary movements, but also simple reflexes are so suppressed, the physiological functions of the respiratory and circulatory organs are so inhibited that a person with little knowledge of medicine can mistake the sleeping person for the dead. This is probably where the belief in the existence of vampires and ghouls originates - people who died a “fake death”, leaving graves and crypts at night to maintain their half-living, half-dead existence with the blood of living people.

Until the 18th century medieval Europe Plague epidemics periodically swept through. The worst was the Black Death of the 14th century, which killed almost a quarter of Europe's population. The merciless disease decimated everyone indiscriminately. Every day, carts loaded to the brim with bodies carried the terrible cargo out of the city to the grave pits. The doors of houses where the infection had settled were marked with red crosses. People abandoned their relatives to the mercy of fate for fear of infection and left cities at the mercy of death. The plague was considered a disaster worse than war. The fear of being buried alive was especially great from the 18th to early XIX centuries. There are many known cases of premature burials. The degree of their reliability varies.

1865 - 5-year-old Max Hoffman, whose family had a farm near a small town in Wisconsin (America), fell ill with cholera. An urgently called doctor could not reassure the parents: in his opinion, there was no hope for recovery. Three days later it was all over. The same doctor, covering Max's body with a sheet, declared him dead. The boy was buried in the village cemetery. The next night, the mother had a terrible dream. She dreamed that Max was turning over in his grave and seemed to be trying to get out of there. She saw him fold his hands and put them under his right cheek. The mother woke up from her heartbreaking scream. She began to beg her husband to dig up the coffin with the child, but he refused. Mr. Hoffman was convinced that her sleep was the result of a nervous shock and that removing the body from the grave would only increase her suffering. But the next night the dream repeated itself, and this time it was impossible to convince the worried mother.

Hoffmann sent his eldest son to fetch a neighbor and a lantern, because their own lantern was broken. At two o'clock in the morning the men began the exhumation. They worked by the light of a lantern hanging on a nearby tree. When they finally got to the coffin and opened it, they saw that Max was lying on his right side, as his mother had dreamed, with his arms folded under right cheek. The child did not show any signs of life, but the father took the body out of the coffin and rode on horseback to the doctor. With great disbelief, the doctor set to work, trying to revive the boy he had declared dead two days before. More than an hour later, his efforts were rewarded: the baby’s eyelid twitched. They used brandy, and placed bags of heated salt under the body and arms. Little by little, signs of improvement began to appear. Within a week, Max had fully recovered from his fantastic adventure. He lived to the age of 80 and died in Clinton, Iowa. Among his most memorable things were two small metal handles from the coffin from which he was rescued thanks to his mother's dream.

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

1968 - Englishwoman Emma Smith set a world record for the longest duration of burial alive: she spent 101 days in a coffin! True... not in a lethargic sleep and without the use of any psychotechnics, she simply lay in a buried coffin, fully conscious. At the same time, air, water and food were supplied to the coffin. Emma even had the opportunity to talk with those who were on the surface using a telephone installed in the coffin...

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

It is believed that the duration of sleep normal person is 5–7 hours. But sometimes the line between normal sleep and sleep caused by stress can be quite subtle. It's about 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 life. People were always afraid to fall into a lethargic sleep, because there was a danger of being buried alive.

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

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

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

The fears of the great writer Nikolai Gogol of being buried alive are well known. The writer suffered a final mental breakdown after the death of the woman whom he loved endlessly - Ekaterina Khomyakova, the wife of his friend. Gogol was shocked by her death. Soon he burned the manuscript of the second part " Dead souls" and went to bed. Doctors advised him to lie down, but his body protected the writer too well: he fell into a sound, life-saving sleep, which at that time was mistaken for death. In 1931, according to the plan for the improvement of Moscow, the Bolsheviks decided to destroy the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, where Gogol was buried. During the exhumation, those present saw with horror that the skull of the great writer was turned to one side, and the material in the coffin was torn...

In England there is still a law according to which all morgue refrigerators must have a bell with a rope so that the revived “dead person” can ringing bells call for help. At the end of the 1960s, the first apparatus was created there that made it possible to detect the most insignificant electrical activity hearts. During testing of the device in the morgue, a living girl was found among the corpses.

The causes of lethargy are not yet known to medicine. Medicine describes cases of people falling into such a dream due to intoxication, large blood loss, hysterical attack, or fainting. It is interesting that in the event of a threat to life (bombing during the war), those sleeping in a lethargic sleep woke up, were able to walk, and after artillery shelling fell asleep again. The aging mechanism in those who fall asleep is very slow. Over the course of 20 years of sleep, they do not change externally, but then they catch up when they are awake biological age in 2–3 years, turning into old people before our eyes.

Nazira Rustemova from Kazakhstan, being 4 summer child, at first “fell into a state similar to delirium, and then fell asleep in a lethargic sleep.” Doctors regional hospital They considered her dead, and soon the parents buried the girl alive. The only thing that saved her was that, according to Muslim custom, the body of the deceased is not buried in the ground, but is wrapped in a shroud and buried in a burial house. Nazira remained in lethargy for 16 years and woke up when she was about to turn 20. According to Rustemova herself, “on the night after the funeral, her father and grandfather heard a voice in a dream that told them that she was alive,” which made them pay more attention to the “corpse” - they found weak signs life.

The case of the longest officially registered lethargic sleep, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, occurred in 1954 with Nadezhda Artemovna Lebedina (who was born in 1920 in the village of Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk region) due to a strong quarrel with her husband. As a result of the resulting stress, Lebedina fell asleep for 20 years and came to her senses again only in 1974. Doctors declared her absolutely healthy.

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

There are cases where lethargic sleep occurred periodically. One priest from England slept six days a week, and on Sunday he got up to eat and serve a prayer service. Usually in mild cases of lethargy there is immobility, muscle relaxation, even breathing, but in severe cases, which are rare, there is a picture of a truly imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils do not react, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, strong painful stimuli do not cause a reaction, no reflexes. The best guarantee against lethargy is a calm life and lack of stress.