On the 6th November, 1838, one grain of the resin of hemp was administered in solution, at two, p.m., to each of these three patients.
At four, p.m., it was reported that one was becoming very talkative, was singing songs, calling loudly for an extra supply of food, and declaring himself in perfect health. The other two patients remained unaffected.
At six, p.m., I received a report to the same effect, but stating that the first patient was now falling asleep.
At eight, p.m., I was alarmed by an emergent note from Nobinchunder Mitter, the clinical clerk on duty, desiring my immediate attendance at the hospital, as the patient’s symptoms were very peculiar and formidable. I went to the hospital without delay, and found him lying on his cot quite insensible, but breathing with perfect regularity, his pulse and skin natural, and the pupils freely contractile on the approach of light.
Alarmed and pained beyond description at such a state of things, I hurried to the other patients—found one asleep, the third awake, intelligent, and free from any symptoms of intoxication or alarm.
Returning then to the first, an emetic was directed to be prepared, and while waiting for it I chanced to lift up the patient’s arm. The professional reader will judge of my astonishment, when I found that it remained in the posture in which I placed it. It required but a very brief examination of the limbs to find that the patient had by the influence of this narcotic been thrown into that strange and most extraordinary of all nervous conditions, into that state which so few have seen, and the existence of which so many still discredit—the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist.
It had been my good fortune years before to have witnessed two unequivocal cases of this disorder. One occurred in the female clinical ward in Edinburgh, under Dr. Duncan’s treatment, and was reported by myself for the “Lancet,” in 1828. The second took place in 1831, in a family with whom I resided in London. This case was witnessed by Dr. Silver, Mr. G. Mills, and several other professional friends. In both these cases the cataleptic state was established in full perfection, and in both the paroxysm terminated suddenly without any evil consequence.
To return to our patient; we raised him to a sitting posture, and placed his arms and limbs in every imaginable attitude. A waxen figure could not be more pliant or more stationary in each position, no matter how contrary to the natural influence of gravity on the part.
To all impressions he was meanwhile almost insensible; he made no sign of understanding questions; could not be aroused. A sinapism to the epigastrium caused no sign of pain. The pharynx and its coadjutor muscles acted freely in the deglutition of the stimulant remedies which I thought it advisable to administer, although the manifest cataleptic state had freed me altogether of the anxiety under which I before labored.
The second patient had meanwhile been roused by the noise in the ward, and seemed vastly amused at the strange aspect and the statue-like attitudes in which the first patient had been placed, when on a sudden he uttered a loud peal of laughter, and exclaimed that “four spirits were springing with his bed into the air.” In vain we attempted to pacify him; his laughter became momentarily more and more incontrollable. We now observed that the limbs were rather rigid, and in a few minutes more his arms or legs could be bent, and would remain in any desired position. A strong stimulant drink was immediately given, and a sinapism applied. Of the latter he made no complaint, but his intoxication led him to such noisy exclamations that we had to remove him to a separate room; here he soon became tranquil, his limbs in less than an hour gained their natural condition, and in two hours he represented himself to be perfectly well and excessively hungry.