FIVE-HOUR YAWN.

Northern Advocate, 6 June 1912, Page 6

FIVE-HOUR YAWN.

A remarkable case of persistent yawning, the seizures following each other in close succession for more than five hours and incapacitating the victim during tL is period, is described by a Brixton medical correspondent in the* "Daily Mail." The patient, a perfectly healthy young*domestic ..servant in a Hernehill household, began to yawn about five o'clock in the evening, x he paroxysms continuing witaout cessation until she fell asleep about ten o'clock The pain in tlie jaw muscles became intense, due *o fatigue* following on their unaccustomed over-use. The doctor suggests that the seizure was due to the powerful influence which mental suggestion has over the muscles used in the act of yawning. '•Practically air the muscles used in yawning are controlled by ouV nerve, the fifth cranial," the doctor writes. "The reason why you are so apt to yawn when you think about yawning is generally believed to be that some reflex stimulus, as a result of the mind's action; finds its way along the fibres of this flfth nerve which sets the yawning mr.scles in motion. "This young■ first two oi* three yawns were possibly due U« the ordinary causes, such as fati gue, boredom, or oxygen hunger through sitting in a badly ventilated ,100 m. Then her attention became drawn to the feet that she had ylwned several times. This focusing of the mind on the subject of yawning was thereafter sufficient stimulus to keep up the piocess until her mind was taken off the subject on falling asleep."