Children find themselves in Wonderland

A dozen children from a kindergarten in Paiho township (白河鎮), Tainan County, have contracted the rare Alice in Wonderland syndrome, local media reported yesterday.

The brain syndrome, first described in 1952, leads children to believe they, and the world around them, are changing in size and shape.

Three children from the kindergarten attached to the Paiho Farmers Association (白河農會附屬幼稚園) in Tainan were sent to the Chiayi Christian Hospital (嘉義基督教醫院) in Chiayi City on Friday where they were diagnosed with the syndrome.

All three children have similar symptoms such as inflamed tonsils, weak limbs, headaches and anxiety.

Ten more children from the kindergarten were sent to the same hospital for the syndrome on Thursday.

Some of the children said they saw dinosaurs or huge rats, while others claimed that their mothers were becoming giants and that rooms were inflating.

"These illusions are part of the Alice in Wonderland syndrome," said Chen Chia-ching, (陳家慶) a pediatrician at the hospital.

Chen said these children may have been infected with the Epstein-Barr virus.

The pediatrician said the virus can be transmitted through saliva or air.

Chen said children are most vulnerable to the syndrome.

Although the disease is infectious, he said it is not fatal and most of the patients recover within weeks with no long-lasting effects.

The manager of the kindergarten may temporarily close the facility.

The Alice in Wonderland syndrome is named because of the resemblance of its symptoms to the fluctuations in size and shape that plague the main character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice in Wonderland.

The medical symptoms of distorted body images match the literary descriptions so precisely that illustrations from the original book depict them very accurately. Because Lewis Carroll suffered from classic migraine headaches, scholars have speculated that he may have experienced this syndrome himself.