[The sleeping girl from Oknö].
The peninsula of Oknö is located on the Baltic in Southern Sweden. It was here a 14 year-old girl "fell asleep" around Christmas time in the year 1875 - she woke up on April 3rd, 1908. She was then 46 years of age and had slept for 32 years. Except for numerous newspaper articles this unusual case has been described by the Swedish psychiatrist Harald Fröderström in 1912. The present article is based on his review and the investigation of the medical records at the hospital of the city of Oskarshamn where the woman in question was hospitalized for one month in 1892. At the city hospital she was given the diagnosis dementia paralytica - a diagnosis which was obviously wrong. When the woman woke up in 1908 she assumed a normal life and remained healthy until she died in 1950 through a brain hemorrhage. Fröderström, who except for an article written in French, wrote several extensive articles for Swedish newspapers about the sleeping girl. These articles are here reviewed from a modern psychiatric point of view.
Holmstedt
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Ljungberg
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Moëll
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Sjöberg
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000266:history*; D012890:Sleep; D013548:Sweden
Soverskan på Oknö.