The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1871-11-03
PeculiaritieS Of Sleep.

why, Tor instance, can some men
maintain their bodily and mental vigor
with so small an amount of sleep as
fails to their share? Lord Brougham,
and many other great statesmen and
lawyers, are known to have been con-
tent with a marvelously small quantity
of sleep. Frederick the Great is said to
have allowed himself only FIVE hours
John Hunter, FIVE hours Gen. Elliott,
the hero Of Gibraltar, four hours while
Wellington, during the Peninsular war,
had still less.
How, on the other hand, to account
for the cormorant sleepers2 De Moivre,
the mathematician, could Though it is
to be hoped he did not) sleep twenty
hours out of the twenty-four. Quin,
the actor, sometimes slept for twenty.
four hours at stretch. DR.. Reid, the
metaphysician, could 80 manage, that
one potent meal, followed by one long
and sound sleep, would last him for two
days. Old Parr slept away his latter
days almost entirely. In the middle of
the last century young French wo-
man, at Toulouse, had, for half year,
fits Of heightened sleep, varying from
three to thirteen days each. About the
same time, girl, at Newcastle
Tyne, slept fourteen weeks without
waking; and the waking process occu-
pied three days to complete. Doctor
Blanchet, of Paris, mentions the case of
lady who slept for twenty days to-
gether when she was about eighteen
years of age, fifty days when she was
about twenty, and had nearly a whole
years sleep from Easter Sunday, 1862,
till March, 1868; during this long sleep
(which physicians call hysteric coma
she was fed with milk and soup, one of
her front teeth being extracted to OBJ.
tain an opening into her mouth Stow,
in his Chronicle, tells US that "The 9th
Of April, 1916, being Tuesdaie in Easter
weeke, w. Foxley, potmaker for the
Mint In the Tower of London, fell
asleep, and 80 continued sleeping, and
could not be walked with pricking,
cramping or otherwise, till the first day
of the next term, which was full four.
teen days and fifteen nights. The
causes of his thus sleeping could not be
knowne, though the same were dill
gentle searched for by the Kings ply
sicians and other learned men yea, the
King himself examined We said w.
Foxley, who was in all points found at
his waking to be as if he had slept but
one night" Another very notable in
stance was that of Samuel Chiffon, of
Timsbury, recorded in one of the earlier
volumes of the Philosophical Transactions
Of the Royal Society. In the year 1864 he
slept for month, and no one could
wake him. Later in the same year he
had four months sleep, from April 9
to Aug. 7 !; he woke, dressed, went out
into the fields where he worked as a
laborer) and found his companions
reaping the corn which he had helped
to SOW the day before his long nap; it
was not tin that moment that he knew
of his sleep having exceeded the usual
duration OF a few hours. He went to
sleep again on the 18th Of August, and
did not wake till the 10th of Novem-
Der, Notwithstanding the pungent appli.
cations of hellebore and sal.ammoniac
to his nostrils, and bleeding to the ex-
tent OF fourteen ounces. He woke,
asked for bread and cheese, but went off
to sleep again before it could be brought
to him, taking another spell of sleep
which lasted till the end of January.
After this it is not recorded that he had
any more of these strange relapses.-
All the Year Round