e persons are in the
habit of going into a mesmeric sleep spontaneously. In these states
there may be a lowering of bodily temperature, a retarding of the
respiration and heart-action, and excessive sluggishness of the action
of the bowels. The patients can hear and may respond to suggestions,
though apparently insensible to painful impressions, and do not appear
to smell, taste, or see; the eyes are closed, turned upward, and the
pupils contracted as in normal sleep.

This subject has been investigated by such authorities as Weir Mitchell
and Hammond, and medical literature is full of interesting cases, many
differing in the physiologic phenomena exhibited; some of the most
striking of these will be quoted. Van Kasthoven of Leyden reports a
strange case of a peasant of Wolkwig who, it is alleged, fell asleep on
June 29, 1706, awakening on January 11, 1707, only to fall asleep again
until March 15th of the same year. Tuke has resurrected the remarkable
case reported by Arnold of Leicester, early in this century. The
patient's name was John Engelbrecht. This man passed into a condition
of catalepsy in which he heard everything about him distinctly, but in
his imagination he seemed to have passed away to another world, this
condition coming on with a suddenness which he describes as with "far
more swiftness than any arrow can fly when discharged from a
cross-bow." He also lost his sensation from the head downward, and
recovered it in the opposite direction. At Bologna there was observed
the case of a young female who after a profound grief had for forty-two
successive days a state of catalepsy lasting from midday to midnight.
Muller of Lowenburg records a case of lethargy in a young female,
following a sudden fright in her fourteenth year, and abrupt
suppression of menstruation. This girl was really in a sleep for four
years. In the first year she was awake from one minute to six hours
during the day. In the second and third years she averaged four hours
wakefulness in ninety-six hours. She took very little nourishment and
sometimes had no bowel-movement for sixteen days. Scull reports the
history of a man of twenty-seven suffering with incipient phthisis, who
remained bedridden and in a state of unconsciousness for fifteen
months. One day while being fed he spoke out and asked for a glass of
water in his usual manner, and so frightened his sister that she ran
from the room. The man had remembered nothing that had occurre