741 
Facts and Observations. 
Sleeping to Death. —We have before referred to a 
Portuguese account of the singular and always fatal lethargic 
disease (lethargus) observed by physicians to be occasionally 
prevalent among the negroes of West Africa. Dr. T. H. 
Baily, who has observed it there, but who is not able more 
than others have been to explain its pathology, describes it 
briefly as follows. It is one of the curiosities of medicine. 
“As the name implies, the principal, and, in fact, only 
symptom that presents itself is lethargy, and one case is 
essentially a stereotype of all. The patient, usually a male 
adult, is seized without any premonitory symptoms, with a 
sensation of drowsiness, which continues rapidly to increase, 
in spite of all efforts to thrown it off, until he sinks into a pro¬ 
found and seemingly natural sleep. This continues for 
about twenty-one days, w 7 hen death takes place. Throughout 
the course of the disease, the patient preserves a quiet and 
peaceful countenance, may be easily aroused for a short 
time, will take nourishment, and generally answ r er a few 
questions in a perfectly rational manner. The pulse, respira¬ 
tion, and temperature remain normal throughout; the pupil is 
neither dilated nor contracted to any noticeable, extent, and 
the urine and faeces are voided with comparative regularity. 
With the exception of the abnormal tendency to sleep, 
nothing exists to denote disease. Many careful post mortem 
examinations have been made by competent men, but nothing 
of an abnormal character has been found. Dr. Smith, 
colonial surgeon at Freetown, informed me that .every remedy 
that could possibly be of any avail had been used, without 
any apparent beneficial effect. They sleep on and glide into 
eternity, in spite of professional skill.— British Medical 
Journal. 
Taenia in a New-born Infant. —Dr. S. G. Armour 
writes in the Detroit Revue of Medicine : “We have just now* 
an unique case in the Long Island College Hospital. An 
infant three days old was found to have trismus: and, in the 
fifth day after its birth, commenced passing w r ell matured 
Taenia solium. Further on, he adds: “Neither Kiichen- 
meister nor Cobbold make mention of the possibility of such 
a thing; and Vogel, in speaking of taeniae, says, “They rarely 
affect children under one year of age/'’ Now here is a 
scientific nut to crack. How did the taenia gain entrance to 
the intestinal canal of the foetus in utero , for the child w'as 
fed on nothing but the mother's milk ?” Our readers will 
