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**LETARGIA**(lethargia - from the Greek leethe - "oblivion", argia - "inaction"), apparently resembling death, it is called "imaginary death", can last from several minutes to several years, although most often its time is measured in units of tens of hours . All the processes in the body during this state are rapidly slowed down (a person can even be mistaken for a deceased person); sense organs (except eyes, which hardly distinguish light because of closed eyelids) continue to fix only the irritations occurring at large intervals of time; during sleep, which lasts for decades, sometimes, the human body does not age at all. Thus, with some assumption, it can be said that Time itself has been braked hundreds of times inside the human body.
Well, after awakening, natural processes in the body usually take precedence, and the woken up grow old for dozens of years that do not reach the "passport" for 3-4 ordinary earth years (ie, the inner time is accelerating again ?!). The analogy with the "tricks" of the time management body can be traced here completely - as in other cases of individual slowing down of Time, the lethargic sleep in a person usually comes after very strong stressful experiences (death of a loved one, any disaster or accident).
As a result of the shock received in a car accident, the 27-year-old Italian Gianluca Giampen fell into a deep lethargic dream. The efforts of doctors who tried to get him out of this state were unsuccessful. My family was in despair. The way out of the situation was found by the friends of the victim. Knowing that he is a passionate fan, they brought a record of the hymn of his favorite football club to the hospital ward and turned on the tape recorder. The effect was amazing: Gianluca, as if nothing had happened, opened his eyes and asked what time it was.
Lethargy comes even after strong hysteria. The case of the longest, officially registered lethargic sleep recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, occurred in 1954 with Nadezhda Artemovna Lebedina (born in 1920 in the village of Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk region) precisely because of a strong quarrel with her husband. As a result of the stress, Lebedin fell asleep for 20 years and regained consciousness only in 1974. Doctors recognized her as completely healthy, and in all guilty admitted family scandals. Sleeping Beauty!
Everything was much more complicated in the case of the storekeeper of the Grodno regional food base Granatkin. Somebody the Swordsman once tried to kill him: he inflicted a mortal blow to the head on a head with some heavy object, took him to the forest and buried Granatkin in the snow. After 22 days, the body, which turned into a "ice", accidentally found lumberjacks. The corpse was taken to the morgue, but the local pathologist was unable to perform an autopsy - the body was too hard. We decided to postpone the inquiry until morning. And in the morning the surgeon noticed that the pupils of the eyes are unlike the eyes of the deceased person, the nails when pressed also slightly glowed. These were signs that a man lying in the snow for 22 days without movement, without eating and drinking, still showed signs of life. However, Granatkin did not have a breath, he did not feel a pulse. And the doctor diagnosed a deep lethargic dream, which arose because of a blow to the head. And soon the "dead man" woke up with the help of doctors! They said and wrote later that Granatkina saved from the complete frost, supposedly that he was warmly dressed and covered with a thick layer of snow, but something does not fit this explanation with reality, because we remember that the "corpse" is frozen through and there are no clothes and his drifts did not warm him.
For the Augustine of Augustine LEGGARD, the stresses that plunged her into a state of lethargy were painful births. A few hours after the birth of her daughter, she fell asleep and no longer reacted to injections and strokes. But very slowly opened her mouth when she was fed. Twenty-two years passed, but the sleeping Augustine remained so young. But the woman started and said: "Frederic, probably, it's late, the child is hungry, I want to feed him!" But instead of a newborn baby she saw a 22-year-old young woman, like two drops similar to her. Soon, however, time took its toll: the awakened woman began to age rapidly, in a year she already turned into an old woman and died after 5 years.
It is known that the last century and the beginning of our life were plagued by cases of lethargy, which, for the sake of justice, it should be noted, were not so common as everyone had heard. To get sick, many famous people were afraid to fall asleep at the time, including the writer Nikolai Vasilyevich GOGOL (he, apparently, fell asleep, he was buried by the sleeper, it was revealed after the opening of the grave).
***In our time, this disease is almost nonexistent***.