_Lucid lethargy._--In certain cases of apparent death the patient exhibits all the external appearance of suspended animation, but the power of conscious perception does not cease. The senses of sight and hearing remain, and are, perhaps, intensified by inhibition of the power of voluntary movement. The sufferer sees and hears; perception, emotion, memory, the power of reasoning, judgment, volition, all persist. Only the power of executing voluntary movements is lacking. The victims of this variety of apparent death are usually women, or men who are characterized by a feminine nervous organization. Great mental excitement, fatigue, semi-starvation, and exhausting diseases, are the principal exciting causes of the event. The following case, related by my friend, Dr. P. S. Hayes, of Chicago, illustrates the phenomena of lucid lethargy. The patient was a female physician, about thirty years of age, unmarried, and consumptively inclined. During the course of a long and wearisome hospital service, she was prostrated with typhoid fever. Placing herself under the immediate care of my informant, she was also attended by several of the most eminent physicians in the city. After a long and exhausting illness she appeared to be dying. In the presence of her physician, and surrounded by her relatives, she ceased to breathe. The pulse stopped, life seemed to have gone out. Bottles of hot water were applied to the limbs, and various restoratives were employed. After a considerable time she began again to breathe, and a gradual recovery followed. During the whole time of apparent death, consciousness had been preserved. She seemed to be looking down from a point above her bed; she could see the doctor feeling for her pulse, and was grieved by the sorrow of her friends. Ordinary sensation was temporarily suspended, and she could not distinguish the contact of the hot-water bottles that were applied to her limbs, though actually scalded by their excessive heat. Borne upon the wings of an excited imagination, she thought herself permitted to look into heaven, but was not suffered to enter its gates. In this exaltation of the imagination the reasoning faculties also shared, so that certain philosophical problems which had previously baffled her intellect were now perfectly comprehensible, and the memory of their solution persisted after recovery. Many similar narratives have been duly authenticated, but the limits of the present chapter will not permit a discussion which properly belongs to an investigation of the phenomena of trance. The important fact for present consideration is the persistence of conscious life, despite the appearance of death. In this preservation of consciousness, notwithstanding the temporary suspension of certain kinds of sensibility and the power of voluntary motion, may be discovered a relationship between the phenomena of lucid lethargy and various disturbances of sleep, which will be considered in a succeeding chapter.