The treatment employed--quinia, strychnia, and iron--had no effect. A temporary improvement was obtained by causing the patients to take part in the amusements of their companions. Electricity seemed likewise to retard somewhat the progress of the disease. The fact that no organic difficulty of the brain was discovered after death, is strong proof that the somnolency was due to some cause affecting the intra-cranial circulation. That the amount of blood was lessened, and that thus a permanent anæmia of the brain was produced, can scarcely be doubted, when regard is had to the observations and experiments recorded in the foregoing pages of this work. Probably the primary derangement was seated in the sympathetic nerve and its ganglia, it having been well settled by familiar observations, and by recent contributions to physiology and pathology, that one of the chief functions of this system is to regulate the caliber of the blood-vessels, and thus to determine the amount of blood circulating through an organ or part of the body. Numerous cases of protracted sleep are on record. Some of them are evidently fanciful and exaggerated, but others are doubtless well founded. One of the most remarkable of these is related, among many others, by Wanley.[145] “One Samuel Chelton, of Finsbury, near Bath, a laboring man, about twenty-five years of age, of a robust habit of body, not fat, but fleshy, and of dark-brown hair, happened, on the 13th of May, 1694, and without visible cause, to fall into a very profound sleep, out of which he could by no means be aroused by those about him till after a month’s time, when he arose of himself and went to his husbandry business as usual. He slept, ate, and drank as before, but did not speak a word till about a month after. All the time he slept, victuals and drink stood by him, which were spent every day, and used by him, as was supposed, though no person saw him eat or drink all the while. After this period he continued free from drowsiness or sleepiness till the 9th of April, 1696, when he fell into his sleeping fit again, as he had done before. After some time his friends were prevailed on to try what effect medicines might have upon him. Accordingly, Mr. Gills, an apothecary, bled, blistered, cupped, and scarified him, and used all the external irritating medicines he could think of, but to no purpose; and after the first fortnight he was never observed to open his eyes: victuals stood by him as before, which he ate of now and then, but no one ever saw him eat or evacuate, though he did both very regularly, as he had occasion; and sometimes he was found fast asleep with the pot in his hand in bed, and sometimes with his mouth full of meat. In this manner he lay about ten weeks, and then he could eat nothing at all, for his jaws seemed to be set, and his teeth clinched so close that, notwithstanding all the art that could be used with instruments, his mouth could not be opened to put anything into it to