Seven Lost Years

At times ... I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these . . . attacks I awoke, however . . . Just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter night--just so tardily--just so wearily--just so cheerily came back the light of the Soul to me.

--Poe's The Premature Burial

Bhopalchand Lodha was a happy man. He had good health, a good wife, ten children and an enviable reputation as public-works secretary of India's Jodhpur State. He was also a proud man. When he was suspended from his job for "misconduct in service" on the basis of vague charges, he telephoned the chief minister and insisted on a hearing. During the talk he became giddy. After waiting a month and a half to defend himself publicly, he was extremely tense and complained of feeling ill. Then--according to the American Journal of Psychiatry, reporting the case for the first time in the U.S.--Lodha had two sharp bouts of malarial fever. Finally, he fell into a deep stupor. He could have passed for a dead man.

But his heart continued to beat and his circulatory, respiratory and alimentary systems to function. That was in September 1944. Lodha's stupor lasted more than seven years, a fact that makes it extraordinary in medical history (most stupors last only a few months at most). During this time he never moved his limbs, opened his eyes or uttered a word. His sensations and deep reflexes were gone.

His wife and his children, one of them a physician, cared for him with remarkable devotion and detail. At first he was fed liquids through a tube in his nose; later, fluids were poured into his mouth while his nose was held. He got an enema every other day, vitamin injections daily. His limbs were massaged regularly. Day and night for seven years, he was shifted every half hour from one position to another to keep his circulation unimpaired. When, in the second year, he developed an abscess, he was operated on without anesthesia. In the fourth year he was cured of pneumonia with penicillin.

Suddenly, on the evening of Jan. 4, 1952, Bhopalchand Lodha's temperature shot up from another attack of malaria. The next day it went down, then up again, then down. His fingers began to move slightly and, a few days later, his toes. Finally his eyes moved. A month later he could turn his head and swallow food. After several more months, his vision was restored, but he could not recognize his children for the changes that seven years had wrought in them. It took him a year to regain complete consciousness.

Lodha had been exonerated of the old charges while he lay in the stupor, but he took the news calmly. He became bright and cheerful once more. He could remember nothing of his seven-year sleep, was unaware that his father had died in the same house a few years earlier.

After studying his case, Bombay's Dr. Nalinkant Sunderji Vahia concluded that Lodha had suffered a catatonic stupor caused by a suppressed aggressive attitude toward the chief minister as they talked on the telephone. Without his family's remarkable care, Lodha might not have lived long. Yet doctors believe that victims of stupor respond more quickly if removed from their usual surroundings. Had Bhopalchand Lodha been treated in a modern hospital, they think, he might not have lost seven years of his life.

Last week, slightly bent from osteoarthritis after his long inactivity, Lodha passed his 57th birthday with his family and--seeming neither tense nor nervous--awaited a hearing in which the state will be the defendant. He is suing to recover more than $8,000 in damages.

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