“A lady, who laboured habitually under melancholy, a few days after parturition was seized with catalepsy, and presented the following appearances:—She was lying in bed motionless and apparently senseless. It was thought the pupils of her eyes were dilated, and some apprehensions were entertained of effusion on the brain; but on examining them closely it was found they readily contracted when the light fell upon them. The only signs of life were warmth, and a pulse which was one hundred and twenty, and weak. In attempting to rouse her from this senseless state, the trunk of the body was lifted up and placed so far back as to form an obtuse angle with the lower extremities, and in this posture, with nothing to support her, she continued sitting for many minutes. One arm was now raised, and then the other, and in the posture they were placed they remained. It was a curious sight to see her sitting up staring lifelessly, her arms outstretched, yet without any visible signs of animation. She was very thin and pallid, and looked like a corpse that had been propped up and stiffened in that attitude. She was now taken out of bed and placed upright, and attempts were made to rouse her by calling loudly in her ears, but in vain; she stood up, indeed, but as inanimate as a statue. The slightest push put her off her balance, and she made no exertion to retain it, and would have fallen had she not been caught. She went into this state three times; the first lasted fourteen hours, the second twelve hours, and the third nine hours, with waking intervals of three days after the first fit, and of one day after the second; after this time the disease assumed the ordinary form of melancholia.—The Science and Practice of Medicine, by Sir W. Aitken, p. 357.
CASES BY DRS. JEBB AND KING CHAMBERS.
Dr. John Jebb, F.R.S., cited in Reynolds’ “System of Medicine,” vol. ii., pp. 99-102, has recorded the following graphic case:—
“In the latter end of last year (viz., 1781), I was desired to visit a young lady who, for nine months, had been afflicted with that singular disorder termed a catalepsy. Although she was prepared for my visit, she was seized with the disorder as soon as my arrival was announced. She was employed in netting, and was passing the needle through the mesh, in which position she immediately became rigid, exhibiting, in a very pleasing form, a figure of death-like sleep, beyond the power of art to imitate or the imagination to conceive. Her forehead was serene, her features perfectly composed. The paleness of her colour, her breathing at a distance being also scarcely perceptible, operated in rendering the similitude to marble more exact and striking. The positions of her fingers, hands, and arms were altered with difficulty, but they preserved every form of flexure they acquired: nor were the muscles of the neck exempted from this law, her head maintaining every situation in which the hand could place it as firmly as her limbs,” etc.
Dr. King Chambers, after citing the above case in full, continues:—
“The most common exciting cause of catalepsy seems to be strong mental emotion. When Covent Garden Theatre was last burnt down, the blaze flashed in at the uncurtained windows of St. Mary’s Hospital. One of my patients, a girl of twenty, recovering from low fever, was woke up by it, and exclaimed that the day of judgment was come. She remained in an excited state all night, and the next morning grew gradually stiff, like a corpse, whispering (before she became quite insensible) that she was dead. If her arm was raised, it remained extended in the position in which it was placed for several minutes, and then slowly subsided. The inelastic kind of way in which it retained its position for a time, and then gradually yielded to the force of gravity, reminded one more of a wax figure than of the marble to which Dr. Jebb compares it. A strange effect was produced by opening the eyelid of one eye; the other eye remained closed, and the raised lid after a time fell very slowly like the arm. A better superficial representation of death it is difficult to conceive.... In both these cases I convinced myself carefully that there was no deception.
“Other cases are of much longer duration.... The death-like state may last for days. It may be mistaken for real death, and treated as such....
“Any cases of apparent death that did occur (in former days) were burnt, or buried, or otherwise put out of the way, and were never more heard of. But after the establishment of Christianity, tenderness, sometimes excessive, for the remains of departed friends took the place of the hard, heathen selfishness. The dead were kept closer to the congregations of the living, as if to represent in material form the dogma of the Communion of Saints. This led to the discovery that some persons, indeed some persons of note (amongst others, Duns Scotus the theologian, at Cologne), had got out of their coffins, and died in a vain attempt to open the doors of their vaults.”
The author relates several other remarkable cases. Here is one:—
“I lighted accidently on another case, communicated to the same scientific body (Acad. Royale des Sciences), by M. Imbert in 1713. It is that of the driver of the Rouen diligence, aged forty-five, who fell into a kind of soporific catalepsy on hearing of the sudden death of a man he had quarrelled with. It appears that ‘M. Burette, under whose care he was at La Charité, made use of the most powerful assistances of art—bleeding in the arms, the foot, the neck, emetics, purgatives, blisters, leeches,’ etc. At last somebody ‘threw him naked into cold water to surprise him.’ The effect surprised the doctors as much as the patient. It is related with evident wonder how that ‘he opened his eyes, looked steadfastly, but did not speak.’ His wife seems to have been a prudent woman, for a week afterwards she ‘carried him home, where he is at present: they gave him no medicine; he speaks sensibly enough, and mends every day.’”