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I doubt that a specific disease isomorphic to one in modern medicine could be found, but the various brain traumas, strokes, pneumonias, end-stage infections, etc resulting in what we would now call "coma" were no doubt fairly well known and described. "Coma" itself is mentioned in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia and derives from a Greek word for a deep sleep that included the medical sense of a morbid lethargy that would have been known by Greek scholars and perhaps by most physicians in the period (it's in Galen, I think). One could check with a medical historian. Many comas are fatal, of course, and the transition can be quite subtle (think of all those deathbed watches in c19th novels), which seems close to Sidney's picture of joining sleep to death. Tom On 11/11/2008, at 10:17 AM, Carol Kaske wrote: > First part seems moral and second part seems medical. I don't > recall any reference to it in De Vita, though we did not compile an > index of diseases. I cked the indices to Ps. Albertus Magnus > Secreta Secretorum and the Trotula, and there's nothing on it. It > would come under the humor phlegm, I would think. > > Roger Kuin wrote: >> (apologies for X-posting) >> I wonder if anyone can give some help on 16C disease. In a 1575 >> letter to Languet, Philip Sidney writes about Protestant >> princes' (lack of) reaction to current dangers: >>> this is certain: our princes slumber altogether too much in a >>> deep sleep. While they are acting so peacefully, I wish that they >>> would watch out, lest they fall into that sickness which joins >>> Death's image to Death itself. >> The 'sickness' to which he refers could of course simply be the >> sin of Sloth; but I was wondering if in Early Modern Europe there >> was any specific disease we know about that might have been >> described in this way. Encephalitis lethargica seems not to have >> turned up until the early 20C; and African Tryponosomiasis was, I >> believe, not known in Europe at the time. >> Any help much appreciated. >> Roger Kuin Tom Bishop Professor and Head of English University of Auckland (64-9) 373-7599 ext 85586 [log in to unmask]