Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-07-31
The PeenIinrities Of Sleep.


The peculiarities of sleep and its phenomena
are thus discussed by a writer in All the Year
Round.
Why, for instance, can some men maintain
their bodily and mental vigor with so small an
amount of sleep as falls to their share? Lord
Brougham and many other great statesmen and
lawyers are known to have been content with
marvelously small quantity of sleep. Frederick
the Great is said to have allowed himself only
five hours; John Hunter, five hours; General
Elliott, the hero Of Gibraltar, five hours; while
Wellington, during the peninsular war, had
still less.
How, on the other hand, to account for the
cormorant sleepers? De Moivre, the mathema-
tician, could Though it is to be hoped he did
not) sleep twenty hours in the twenty-l0ur.
Quin, the actor, sometimes slept twenty-four
hour at stretch. DR.. Reid, the
metaphysician, could so 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 last century young
Frenchwoman, at Toulouse, had, for a half
year, fits of heightened sleep, varying from
three to thirteen days each. About the same
time, a girl at Newcastle-on-Tyne slept fourteen
weeks without waking; and the waking pro-
cess occupied three days TO complete. Doctor
Blanchet, of Paris, mentions the case of lady
who slept twenty days together when she was
about eighteen years of age fifty days when she
sleep from Easter Sunday, 1862, till March, 1858;
during this long sleep (Which physicians call
hysteric coma) she was fed with milk and soup,
one of her front teeth being extracted to obtain
an opening into her mouth Stow, in his Cbr0ni-
Gle, tell us that the 9th of April 1916, being
Tuesdaie in Easter week, w. Fox ley, potmaker
for the Mint in the Tower of London, fell
asleep, and so continued sleeping, and could
not be walked with pricking, cramping, or other
wise, till the first day of the next term, which
was full fourteen days and fifteen nights. The
causes of his thus seepingg could not be
knowne, tho the same were diligentle searched
for by the Kings physicians and other learned
men; yea, the King himselfe examined We said
w. FL xley, who was in all points found at his
waking to be as if he had slept but one night"
Another very notable instance was that of
Samuel Chiffon, of Timsbury, recorded in one
of the early volumes of the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society,"" In the
year 1894 he slept for a month, and
no one could wake him. Later in
the same year he had four months
sleep, from April 8 to August 7; he woke,
dressed, went out into the fields, where he work.
ed as laborer, and found his companions reap
ing the corn which he had helped to SOW the
day before his long nap; it was not till that mo-
ment that he knew of his sleep having exceeded
the usual duration of few hours. He went to
sleep again on the 7th of August and did not wake
till the 10Th of November, Notwithstanding the
pungent applications of hellebore and ammoniac
to his nOstrils, and bleeding to the extent 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.