A lot of us watched this in movies and cartoons but didn’t know it actually happened in reality.
Meet Ellen Sadler who is also known as the “Sleeping girl of Turville.” She was barely 11-year-old when she slept off on March 29th,1871 and didn’t wake up until she turned 21.
Ellen Sadler was born on 15th of May 1859 in a small village called Turville, located between Oxford and Buckinghamshire. She was the 10th child out of 12 children.
After Ellen slept off on the 29th of March 1871, all attempts to wake her up proved abortive. Everyone thought she was dead initially, but her purse was reading. Doctors and medical experts from all over the country couldn’t tell what had happened to her after examining her at that time. Everyone was thrown into confusion because such had never happened before.
The news of Ellen’s case had traveled far and wide, people wanted to see for themselves, as they started visiting her home, others tried their method to see if it would wake her up.
Experts from all over came with their inventions and Technics but all to no avail. Ellen’s mum had hoped her daughter would wake up some day, so she never stopped feeding her milk, wine and porridge with a small teapot, but her jaw locked after a year. Her mother still didn’t relent, she began to feed her through a small gap from where her canine fell.
Unfortunately, her mother died of heart attack in 1880. According to the doctors, it was caused by the constant thinking that Ellen might never wake-up. But surprisingly, Ellen Sadler woke up 5 months after her mother’s demise.
The villagers were shocked and surprised at her waking up. Her siblings told her their parents had passed on.
A little girl who went to bed at age 11, and woke up at age 21. It was like a dream to her. Although she woke up being 21, mentally she was still 11.
Apparently, Ellen Sadler was the first case of Trypanosomiasis otherwise known as sleeping sickness.
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