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Sleeping Lucy, The Famous Doctor Who Healed Patients While She Slept
In the 19th century, a Vermont woman with no medical training named Lucy Ainsworth Cook gained widespread fame for her ability to treat patients through clairvoyant trances
In the middle of the 19th century, practicing medicine was still rudimentary, and women were not a common presence in the field. However, that didn’t stop a Vermont woman named Lucy A. Cooke from becoming a renowned doctor known as Sleeping Lucy, whose skill in healing patients wasn’t rooted in education, but rather in her reputed ability to do so in a state of clairvoyance while she slept.
Born Lucy Ainsworth in 1819, Sleeping Lucy was one of nine children in a poor farming family. It was an all hands on deck situation, and the young girl was eventually apprenticed to a tailor to help earn money.
During her childhood, she fell victim to an unknown illness that was so serious that she spent nearly two years in bed. At various points her family feared whether or not she would survive, which was only exacerbated at one point when she fell into a particularly deep sleep and would not awake.
When Lucy finally woke up, she told fantastical stories of having heard voices…
