The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-26
WOMAN IN SWEDEN SLEPT FOR YEARS Ultimately Recovered After Lethargy of g Years HOW SHE WAS FED Fell Into StuDor One Day On Return From School and Remained In
 This Condition Until
 1908
HOW SHE WAS FED
From the London Lancet.

From the London Lancet. Some years ago the swedish press
 was greatly taken up with the case
 of "the sleeper of Okna, a woman
 who in April, 1908, suddenly awakened
 from a condition Of lethargy and stu l DOT which had lasted some 9 years,
 and who was hailed as having been
 "miraculously" cured. No careful med
 teal or psychological study of the case
 was made at the time, but toward the
 end of 1910 the management of
 the newspaper stockholmstidningen
 depnted Dr. Harold Frederstrom of Stockholm to investigate the case inde- pendently, and an account of the curi ous facts and somewhat mysterious cir
 cumstances surrounding it has been published by him in the Nouvelle Ieon- ographie de Ia Salpetriere. Caroline 1 Olsson was born on Ocober go, 1861,
 in Okno, a small island off the east
 coast of Sweden. No definite informa-
 tion as to homeopathic diathess or
 psychic anomaly in the family history
 is forthcoming. Apparently Caroline
 passed a perfectly normal infancy and
 girlhood up to the age of II. owing to l certain difficulties in the way, however,
 she did not attend school until few months before she fell i'll, some time about Christmas, 1875.
 Fell Into StupOr
 One day on her way home from school, a distance ot some five kilo-
 meters. she was unaccompanied by her l brothers, who had remained behind for 1 some reason, and on reaching the house l she complained of toothache and of
 malaise. and was put to bed. In the l course of very short time she Tell l into a state of profound stupor. not speaking a single word and remaining completely insensitive to the stimulus 1 of a pin prick, and in this state she | continued for 32 years. In spite of
 the fact that popular credence attached importance to her coming home alone
 and to idle tales of something having "touchedY her. pr. Froderstrom could obtain no evidence of this really hay l ing been the case. Her mother who died in l9O5 looked after her at home 1 up to this date and during these 32 l years Caroline never said single word, 1 | except when her mother once in deSper | l ation besought her to pray, and the pa
 tient said, Kind Jesus, have pity on
 me- 1 Some three or four times she was 1 known to have left her bed momen- 1 tarily during that period. otherwise l she remained huddled up in bed with 1 the clothes drawn over her head Her
 mother gave her apparently never more l than two cups of milk in the 24 hours, although it would seem that the two were often left alone for hours at a l time, the male members of the family 1 being out at work. When Caroline was 1 told that her mother was dead she burst into tears, but otherwise her con- | dition remained exactly as before. Two l years later, in 1907 the brother who l aH fa ba mother had done, was accidentally l drowned; on hearing of this the patient | again had a violent outburst of tears. | Then a housekeeper was obtained, and l this person, who seems to have been
 a woman of considerable intelligence, | began to notice some curious fac about the case Thus she often re- l marked that objects in the patients l room were changed from place to place: | she noted that the patients linen was l never soiled with dejecta or otherwise, 1 l that her nails were never beyound the l | nal length, that her person was not
 dirty, that her hair was never untidy. 1 As Caroline was always left alone for | some hours in the middle of the day. | it was felt that she was doing much | more for herself than had hitherto been |
 imagined. At last the housekeeper came to realize that the patient was finding | difficulty in keeping up her nourish- | |
 boards in q mysterious way Became Perfectly Normal | Eventually, on April 3, 1908. the pa l tient suddenly said, Where is mother?" and when her brothers came into her
 room in astonishment, she said, "You
 are not my brothers; they were so | small" Yet. curiouslH enough she did not show any surprise at seeing the 1 housekeeper in the room. From that l day the patients condition became per fectly normal, and il has remained so
 ever since. Apart from the complete l amnesia for the events of 32 years, 1 Caroline does not differ In any way 1 from the normal individual. pr. Frod- 1 erstrom subjected her to a careful neu- rological and psychological examina- l tion, without finding any trace of dis I ease or of physical defect. She re- | membered the events of her childhood perfectly. but was very unwilling to
 talk about her illness. ~j 1t is not without interest to note 1 ] that the period of it, from IA to 46, | corresponds closely to the average re- production period of the female in the | | northern Germanic races. Dr. Froder- | one not of hysteria but of catatonie | stupor, though he admits it is difficult | sometimes to distinguish between the | 1 two. The element of stimulation, which l entered into the case strongly, seems | rather in favor of the former diag- nosis. The suggestion is made that the l awakening or reawakening of the in- | stinct of sef-preservation as the re- | suit of the mothers death, was the step | that led eventually to the complete re- | covery of the patient.