SLEEPING MAN SPEAKS.
General Hospital Patient May Be
Victim to Acute Melancholia.
L. C. Webster, who has been at the general hospital nearly four days with what physicians believed was sleeping sickness, spoke yesterday. He is now believed by Dr. Johnson, house surgeon, to be suffering from acute melancholia.
In response to questions by a nurse, Webster yesterday nodded twice. Later, he asked for a drink of water. The nurse told him he would not get it unless he opened his eyes. Webster complied with the condition. The patient is being closely watched.
Acute melancholia is a form of insanity.
Mrs. Lillian Alexander slept at the Bethany hospital in Kansas City, Kas., in October, 1900, for fifty-four hours. When she awoke she appeared to be in a normal condition, and talked freely with the attendants at the hospital. Then after two days, she went to sleep again for 103 hours, or nearly five days.
Mrs. Alexander came from Leavenworth to the hospital. Her mother said that in Leavenworth she slept continuously for twenty-five, waking the day before she was brought to the hospital, October 20. Previous to that time she had once slept for five days. The doctors attending Mrs. Alexander said she was suffering from melancholia. She was shortly afterward adjudged insane and taken to the asylum at Osawatomie. There she again went into a deep sleep from which she never awakened.
Mrs. Alexander slept part of the time with her eyes open. Her breathing was like that of a sleeping person, and in all way s she appeared to be sleeping. She was given necessary food through a tube.
Mrs. Alexander was a widow, 34 years old, with two children. She was a music teacher and worked herself into an hysterical condition.
William Fullcher slept for 115 hours in the Wyandotte county jail about three years ago.
