The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-05-17

would give them a hint as to the cause
of this strange sleep.
When DR.. Giesy left for the east a
week or ten days ago, DR.. Saylor, coun-
ty physician, assumed charge of the
case. The result of his diagnosis made
him think that it was a case of hys-
iteria-ca talepsy, Dartaking of both the
nature of pure catalepsy and also hys-
terra. Wednesday, finding the girl was
still sleeping, he prescribed cold baths
twice day.
That evening one of the nurses, who
understands massage, placed her in a
rubber sheet and poured cold water
over her. She lay passive while this
was done and also through all of the
massage part of the bath, which was
pretty vigorous. Said the nurse after
ward: Il SLAPPED her good, and when
was through her skin was actually
rosy
| When Miss Hansen was put back into
! her cot she volunteered a remark, the
| first in thirty-five days. She said that
she felt better. Yesterday morning she
had another cold bath, with a massage
afterward. which seemed to improve
her. When an Oregonian reporter was
! brought into the ward early in the fore
noon, she was lying there with her eyes
open, for the first time in five weeks.
! Her eyes are pale blue and they ap-
pear to look at one with an utter lack
of intelligence. The expression of her
| face, though, seemed to indicate some
kind of suffering, much as might that
of a dumb brute
To all the reporters questions she
| gave blank stare for an answer.
! though finally, when she was asked
| who brought her to the hospital, she
family murmured 'Sophy" When the
| reporter left the ward, she was still
| lying in the cot, but instead of being
asleep she lay with her eyes wide open.
i Later in the day she went to sleep
| again.
Tn news that the "gfrl sleeper as
she is called in the hospital, had awak-
ened, quickly spread and everybody
was curious to know whether she was
going to get well. The physicians who
| arrived liz the course of the morning
expressed all sorts of theories as to the
cause of the sleep, there being a wide
! divergence of opinion. In their rounds
| of the hospital they had all heard of
| the curious case, and admitted that no
one of them had ever met with such a
case before.
| DR.. Saylor was asked for an opinion
! in regard to Miss Hansen's strange
sleep, and he again expressed himself
/ as thinking that it was case of hys-
teria-catalepsy.
Men and women of her nationality
I are often of a sluggish temperament, .
he said. Their vitality is low, and
they are slow in recovering from i'll
ness. We had a case here of an old
woman who was three months in get
ting over an attack of typhoid fever
She would not get WELL and, finally, 1
had to threaten to bundle her off to the
| poOrhOuSe This frightened the old
lady into getting well, otherwise she
would still have been sitting in the
hospital in a chair.
This case is, of course, different 1t
is a very serious case, and / am be-
coming very much interested in it.
| Her present condition is primarily the
result of nervous prostration. She
probably had run down very much
physically. and this, in connection with
worry and mental troubles, has re-
duced her to a semi-cataleptic state, the
result, in fact, of hysteria"
DR.. Saylor Thought that the girls