Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
The Kleine-Levin Syndrome, first categorized by Critchley and Hoffman in 1942, consists of periodic hypersomnia and megaphagia associated with abnormal mental states. Though a case of hypersomnia with doubtful megaphagia was described by J. A. Antimoff as far back as 1898, the first two cases definitely belonging to the syndrome lie hidden in a group of five cases reported by Willi Kleine (1925), a psychiatrist of the Kleist Clinic, Frankfurt, under the title of ‘Periodische Schlafsucht’. The patients were adolescent males who showed periodic hypersomnia with eating of excessive food and an unusual mental state. Writing on narcolepsy, a New York psychiatrist, Max Levin (1929), described a boy who exhibited pathological hunger in association with episodes of sleep of unusual duration. ‘The patient would sleep for long periods at the beginning of each attack. His appetite was enormous. He ate large meals and much in between meals. Max Levin rewrote his original case in 1936, and for the first time made specific mention of a ‘syndrome of periodic somnolence and morbid hunger as a new entity in nosology’ and quoted seven cases as ‘good’ examples of the syndrome.
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