![]() This is a common mistake, even today, most people failing to distinguish between the sleepiness of narcolepsy and the cataplectic seizures that have an outward resemblance to sleep but are, as we will see, something completely different. ![]() He cannot move, and must sit or lean on something. At the same time, he loses all strength in his limbs and the ability to speak. “His eyes close involuntarily, and he cannot keep them open,” Westphal told his medical audience. He had witnessed several attacks in one of his patients, a bookbinder called Herr Ehlert. The idea that Dante suffered from narcolepsy is certainly intriguing, but most sleep specialists-including Plazzi-date the first unequivocal description of cataplexy to 1877, when German psychiatrist Karl Westphal presented a case at a meeting of the Berlin Medical and Psychological Society. “I fainted out of pity, and, as if l were dying, fell, as a dead body falls.” In the middle of his journey through Hell, for instance, Dante hears the tragic love story of two lost spirits and collapses. ![]() Giuseppe Plazzi, head of the sleep lab at the University of Bologna, has argued that Dante Alighieri might have suffered from narcolepsy with cataplexy all the way back in the 14th century, as his autobiographical masterpiece The Divine Comedy features most of the symptoms, including cataplexy. Most obviously, narcolepsy (that invincible need to sleep) involves a loss of consciousness. “For those who have first-hand experience of narcolepsy and cataplexy, the distinction is abundantly clear. Doctors too have suggested plenty of names for cataplexy over the years, like affectotonia, gelolepsy, affective adynamia, tonus blockade, emotional asthenia and geloplegia. More rarely, there are simple exclamations, like “oh no” or “man down ,”succinct utterings that alert those in the know to an impending collapse. Others swoon, bungle, fall from grace, go lop sop doi. If I’m in the middle of an attack, for example, I am gibbering. Many use verbs that give a better sense of the action. Where I have “a gibber,” for instance, others have a wobble, the wobbles, the wobblies, the jitters, a pajama flop, the floppies, the jellies, a jellyfish attack, a cat attack, a cat do, a do. More commonly, there are simple nouns, distilling each attack into a clearly defined, almost sentimental entity. In her brilliant memoir Wide Awake and Dreaming, Julie Flygare refers to this feeling as “my knee thing.” Others have jelly legs, heavy legs, spaghetti legs, a funny turn, a moment, a melting moment. There are a few people whose words for cataplexy were probably coined in the first few weeks, when mirth resulted in a new and puzzling weakness at the backs of the knees but before this progressed to a full-blown collapse. In spite of appearances, the woman in the orange dress had remained completely conscious throughout this brief episode. ![]() To the uninitiated, it might have looked as though the woman in front of me had suddenly fallen asleep. I would have been surprised at this fit, except that this was the annual meeting of Narcolepsy UK, and falling over like this is standard practice for most people with narcolepsy. Within seconds, and before I could offer my assistance, she was back, rising Phoenix-like inside her bright orange dress in perfect time to receive a cup of coffee and a biscuit. It all happened very quickly, but if it had been possible to slow down the motion, I would have seen her head drop first, chin onto chest, her shoulders relax, arms flop to her sides, and legs buckle. As she fell, she resembled a push puppet, one of those little elasticated toys that collapses when you press the button on the base. I was at a conference, standing in the queue for coffee during a break between sessions, and the woman in front of me went down. “Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment.”
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