SEVEN YEARS’ SLEEP

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7018, 18 September 1929, Page 2

SEVEN YEARS’ SLEEP

The world’s longest sloop came to an end in a'Moscow hospital last month. Seven years and two months previously a young gj.rl of ten, Lichagina Evodokiya, was admitted to the hospital suffering from what specialists diagnosed a form of sleeping sickness. On August 2, ?-t the ago of 17, she suddenly startled .the ward nurse by rolling over on her side, opening her eys, and asking for food. “I am hungry,” the girl said in a weak voice. It was the first timo she had moved or spoken for over seven years.

Doctors’rushed to the girl’s bedside and discovered that she had recovered the use’of both arms and logs. Her mental development, however, seems to have been arrested, and her voice and conversation are still that of a child of ten. For want of exercise her legs have not developed in conjunction with her body, but the specialists believe that this can now bo- remedied.

Though, she is able to talk, Lichagina finds difficulty in co-ordinating her sentences; and she has'to- stop to recover breath after every few words. Throughout the seven years that the girl has remained in a trance .the doctors have fed her with liquid food, whieji ,was placed, in her mouth. It was obvious that she retained her sense of feeling, for, in. experiments carried >. out by the specialists, it was found that, a sharp blow on the knee caused her leg to straighten. The girl’s illness began with a severe attack of typhoid fever in her native village, nfiar Riazan. Shortly afterwards she complained of feeling tired and weary, and then went into a trance.