The 30-year-old woman was playing bridge with her friends when she suddenly leaned back in her chair and fell sound asleep. One minute later she woke up and continued to play her hand, unaware that anything had happened. Her friends seemed unfazed. They knew that Katherine suffered from a strange condition called narcolepsy, which produced a dozen spells of this sort every day. continued...

Illustration: William Duke

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Reprinted from the HHMI Bulletin,
March 2003, pages 8–13.
©2003 Howard Hughes Medical Institute