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A gentleman at yesterday's dinner-party mentioned, that he took pupils; and, before I had expressed the astonishment I felt, professed himself a disciple; and was happy to assure us, he said, that though he had not yet attained the desirable power of putting a person into a catalepsy at pleasure, he could throw a woman into a deep swoon, from which no arts but his own could recover her.
"From what Meyraux has been telling us, recovery seems impossible," answered Bianchon. "Medicine has no power over the change that is working in his brain." "Yet there are physical means," said d'Arthez. "Yes," said Bianchon; "we might produce imbecility instead of catalepsy." "Is there no way of offering another head to the spirit of evil? I would give mine to save him!" cried Michel Chrestien.
In this stage insensibility is so complete that needles can be run into any part of the body without producing pain, and surgical operations may be performed without the slightest unpleasant effect. This stage lasts usually but a short time, and the patient, under ordinary conditions, will pass upward into the stage of catalepsy, in which he opens his eyes.
For the moment, I thought he had been seized with a fit of catalepsy. He moved, however, when I tried to take his hand to feel the pulse shrinking back in his chair, and feebly signing to me to leave him. I committed him to the care of his servant.
Except that I could move and feel, I was like a man fallen in a catalepsy. But time was scarce given me to realise my isolation; the weights were hung upon my back and breast, the signal rope was thrust into my unresisting hand; and setting a twenty-pound foot upon the ladder, I began ponderously to descend. Some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight fell.
Hysteria and catalepsy may assume characters resembling those of tetanus, but there is little difficulty in distinguishing between these diseases. Lastly, in the tetany of children, or that following operations on the thyreoid gland, the spasms are of a jerking character, affect chiefly the hands and fingers, and yield to medicinal treatment.
I have often wanted to tell you, but I cannot bear to speak of it. The old horror always comes back when I think of it. But I feel that I ought to tell you before we are married, and I will do so now since we are speaking of it. I did not have brain fever, but when I was nine years old I died." "You what?" "Yes, it is true. They called it catalepsy, a trance; but it was not; I was really dead.
There is also a condition of extreme lethargy, a sort of trance state, that lasts for days and even weeks, and, indeed, has been known to last for years. There is also a lighter phase than somnambulism, that is called fascination. Some doctors, however, place it between catalepsy and somnambulism. Each of these stages is marked by quite distinct phenomena.
Call my state what you will, trance or catalepsy, I know that I remained standing by the window utterly unconscious dead, mind and body until the sun had set. Then I came to my senses again; and then, when I opened my eyes, there was the apparition of Stephen Monkton standing opposite to me, faintly luminous, just as it stands opposite me at this very moment by your side."
In lethargy and catalepsy the perspiration very often has a cadaverous odor, which has probably occasionally led to a mistaken diagnosis of death. Schaper and de Meara speak of persons having a cadaveric odor during their entire life. Various ingesta readily give evidence of themselves by their influence upon the breath.
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