Word: asleep
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...trouble!" exclaimed a former Mayo Clinic secretary as she read an article on sleep seizures. Her chance observation led the clinic's doctors to a research gold mine. Her whole family, for four and possibly five generations, has been studded with men and women who kept falling asleep at meals, on the job, on Army guard duty, while playing cards-and, distressingly often, at the wheel...
...Daly and Robert E. Yoss. said that she had been "fighting sleep all of my life." She could stay awake only while active ("If I sit down, I'm lost"), so she had to walk around the room all the time when she had guests. She fell asleep while playing cards. The diagnosis was narcolepsy (from the Greek narke, stupor, and lepsis, seizure). Relatively rare, its cause unknown, narcolepsy was not even known to run in families until the Mayo Clinic compiled records on more than 200 cases...
...Movies & Church. Most of the secretary's family were in Minnesota, close around Rochester and accessible for interviews. The trail led back to the first patient's grandfather, a farmer. His daughters remembered him as a "very sleepy person who always fell asleep when he sat down." His wife was normal. So were his son and younger daughter. But his elder daughter, 67, complained of severe drowsiness and episodes of sleep many times a day for at least 40 years. How she managed was a mystery because she had 16 children. She consistently fell asleep at movies, even...
...dangerous driver because a "close shave" would wake him and he had not yet had a serious accident. One of the sons had been disciplined in the Army for sleeping on duty, became a truck driver (he kept the windows open even in winter to stay awake); he fell asleep twice during the Mayo interview. One of his sisters has the knack of napping while standing...
...Highway. In the abundant fourth generation (57 members), the doctors ignored all under 15 because narcolepsy is a tricky diagnosis in the young. Still, they found several cases. Their first patient's 20-year-old son had the not surprising habit of falling asleep in church, but carried it to the extreme of doing so while serving as an altar boy. Recently he was fired for sleeping on his job. and he has already had two serious accidents, in one of which he demolished...