Turville is a picturesque English village about 35 miles from London. It was there that Ellen Sadler was born in 1859, the youngest of ten children. Ellen was hired out as a nursemaid when she was eleven years old, but a mysterious illness put an end to her employment. The doctor noticed an abscess on her head he called a glandular swelling. Ellen spent four months in the hospital, but was sent home as incurable. She then had a few seizures, laid down to rest, and didn't wake up for nine years.
Naturally, this became village news, and the story spread further. Ellen Sadler put Turville on the map. Scientists, journalists, and the general public wanted to see the sleeping girl, and her parents obliged. The visitors often left small donations, which added a substantial amount to the poor family's earnings. Ellen's mother explained how she fed the girl with a small teapot of port wine and another of milk. As the years went by, some had their suspicions about the girl's condition. The climax of the story came when Ellen's mother died, and she was put into the custody of her older sisters. Within just a few months, Ellen woke up, by then a grown woman, and recovered completely.
There are conditions that can put someone in a coma for years, but no doctor ever had a diagnosis for Ellen Sadler. It seems unlikely that she would have survived, much less recovered completely on the life support her mother described. Read the story of Ellen Sadler at Amusing Planet.
