  CATALEPSY. Catalepsy differs in some of its characteristics from trance, but the one is often mistaken for the other. It is not so much a disease as a symptom of certain nervous disorders, and to which women and children are more particularly liable. Catalepsy can be produced artificially by hypnotisation. Like trance, it has often been mistaken for death, and its subjects buried alive. Dr. Franz Hartmann differentiates the two disorders as follows:—“There seems hardly any limit to the time during which a person may remain in a trance; but catalepsy is due to some obstruction in the organic mechanism of the body, on account of its exhausted nervous power. In the last case the activity of life begins again as soon as the impediment is removed, or the nervous energy has recuperated its strength.” Dr. Gowers, in Quain’s “Dictionary of Medicine,” ed. 1894, vol. i., pp. 284-5, describes catalepsy as belonging to both sexes, at all ages from six to sixty. It is a nervous affection, commonly associated with distinct evidence of hysteria, but said sometimes to occur as an early symptom of epilepsy. It is attended commonly with loss of consciousness. The limbs remain in the position they occupied at the onset, as if petrified. The whole or part of the muscles pass into a state of rigidity. In profound conditions sensibility is lost to NATURE OF CATALEPSY. Cassell’s Family Physician (by Physicians and Surgeons of the principal London Hospitals) describes this singular affection, as follows:—“Catalepsy is one of the strangest diseases possible. It is of rare occurrence, and some very sceptical people have even gone so far as to deny its existence. That is all nonsense, for catalepsy is just as much a reality as gout or bronchitis. A fit of catalepsy—for it is a paroxysmal disease—consists essentially in the sudden suspension of thought, feeling, and the power of moving. The patient remains in any position in which she—we say she, for it occurs mostly in women—happens to be at the moment of the seizure, and will, moreover, retain any posture in which she may be placed during the continuance of the fit. For example, you may stretch out the arms to their full length, and there they remain stretched out without showing the slightest tendency to drop. It does not matter how absurd or inconvenient or apparently fatiguing the position may be, it is maintained until altered by some one or until the fit is over. In these attacks there are no convulsions, but, on the contrary, the patient remains perfectly immobile. She is just like a waxen figure, or an inanimate statue, or a frozen corpse. “Cataleptic fits vary very much, not only in their frequency, but in their duration. Sometimes they are very short indeed, lasting only a few minutes. In one case, that of a lady, they would sometimes come on when she was reading aloud. She would stop suddenly The following case, contributed by Dr. Gooch, will further illustrate this malady:— “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 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 “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 CASES FROM THE MEDICAL JOURNALS. The Lancet, 1870, vol. i., p. 1044, in its Paris correspondence says:— “The following curious case is related as having occurred at Dunkirk, on April 14, and as ‘showing the utility of catalepsy.’ A young girl of seventeen years was seized with a violent attack of epilepsy, and fell, on the above date, into a canal. A boatman immediately jumped into the water to save her, and brought her to the shore after twenty minutes. The most singular circumstance connected with the accident is that, when the young girl was taken out of the water, she presented all the symptoms of catalepsy. Notwithstanding this long immersion, she was resuscitated, and nothing afterwards transpired to cause any anxiety.” Mr. James Braid, M.R.C.S., in the Medical Times, 1850, vol. xxi., p. 402, narrates a case of a cataleptic woman in the Manchester Royal Infirmary under the care of Dr. John Mitchell, and writes:— “Every variety of contrivance and torture was resorted to by various parties who saw her, for the purpose of testing the degree of her insensibility, and for determining whether she might not be an impostor, but without eliciting the slightest indication of activity of any of the senses; ... nevertheless she heard and understood all that was said and proposed to be done, and suffered the most exquisite torture from various tests applied to her!! A fact so important as this ought to be published in every journal throughout the civilised world; so that in future professional men might be thereby led to exercise greater discretion and mercy in their modes of applying tests to such patients.” The Somerset County Herald (Taunton) of October 12 1895, has the following:— “EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF TRANCE NEAR WEYMOUTH. “The wedding nuptials of a sailor from H.M.S. Alexandra and a young woman residing at Broadwey, who were recently married, have been interrupted in a most unusual manner by the newly-made bride falling into a trance. On the day following the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer, for such is the name of the newly-espoused pair, went for a drive, and on returning in the evening the bride, remarking that she did not feel very well, went upstairs, and before long was in a sound sleep, which continued throughout the night and far into the following day. The relatives of the bride, remembering symptoms which she had previously developed, then sent for Dr. Pridham, who at once pronounced that the unfortunate young woman had fallen into a trance. Dr. Colmer, of Weymouth, was likewise called; but nothing that these two medical gentlemen could do had the slightest effect in arousing their patient from the state of lethargy into which she had so suddenly and unexpectedly relapsed. In this condition she remained for a space of five days, when she gradually showed signs of returning animation, and in the course of a few hours regained consciousness, though she was then in a very exhausted condition. After her awakening the young woman developed inflammation of the legs, which was regarded as a very serious condition for her to be in. In an interview on Saturday, Dr. Pridham described the trance as being exceedingly death-like in character, and added that, in such trances as the one in question, in the past people have no doubt been actually buried.” A report of this case appears in the St. James’s Gazette. A less experienced practitioner would probably have made out a death certificate, as in numerous similar cases. After burial we hear no more of them; they may have been buried in a death-like trance, but the medical APATHY OF THE PUBLIC. The existence of trance, catalepsy, and other death counterfeits, followed by hasty burial, has been alluded to by reputable writers from time immemorial; and while the veracity of these writers has remained unchallenged, and their narratives are confirmed by hundreds of cases of modern experience, the effect on the public mind has been only of a transitory character, and nothing has been done either in England or America to safeguard the people from such dreadful mistakes. |
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