Eating f Drinkiny^ and Sleeping, 255 



Amongst the sleepy people of modern times, the case of 

 Elizabeth Perkins, of Morley St. Peter, in Norfolk, should be 

 noticed as a case somewhat resembling that just alluded to. 

 For a considerable time she was very regular in her times of 

 waking, which was once in seven days, after which they 

 became irregular and precarious, and, though of shorter 

 duration, they were equally profound ; and every attempt at 

 keeping her awake, or awaking her, were vain. Various expe- 

 riments were tried ; and an itinerant empiric, elated with the 

 hope of rousing her from what he called " her counterfeit 

 sleep," blew into her nostrils the powder of white hellebore, 

 being a very powerful sternutative ; but the poor creature 

 remained insensible to the inhumanity of the deed, which, 

 instead of producing the boasted effect, excoriated the skin of 

 her nose, lips, and face. 



Buonaparte was polite enough to say to a gentleman, 

 " J'irai dormir vite pour vous;" from which we may con- 

 clude, that he possessed some of the properties of the man 

 who advertised, in the Spectator, that he intended to sleep at 

 the Cock and Bottle, in Little Britain. 



The following account of this affair is from a scarce tract in 

 the British Museum : — '^ The sleepy man awakened of his 

 five days' dream ; being a most strange and wonderful true 

 account of one Nicholas Heart, a Dutchman, a patient of St 

 Bartholomew**s Hospital, in West Smithfield, who sleeps five 

 days every August : and you have a true relation how his 

 mother fell in one of her sleeps on the first of August, she 

 then being near the time of her labour ; and on the fifth day 

 she wakened, and was delivered. As soon as he was born, he 

 sleeped for five days and five nights : together with the true 

 dream which he and his mother dreamt every year alike. But 

 what is more particular than all the rest, he gives an account 

 of one Mr. William Morgan, who he saw hurried to a dismal, 

 dark castle ; and one Mr. John Paimer, he saw him going 

 into a place of bliss : these two men were patients in the 

 hospital, and dy'd while he was in his sleep. London : 

 printed by Edward Midwinter, at the Sun, Pye Corner, 

 Smithfield." We have here given the whole of the title, 

 which tells nearly all about this sleepy set. 



T2 



