_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 in the middle of a sentence, and a peculiar stiffness of the whole body would seize her, fixing the limbs immovably for several minutes. Then it would pass off, and the reading would be continued at the very word at which it had been interrupted, the patient being quite unconscious that anything had happened. But sometimes fits such as these may last for days and days together, and it seems not improbable that people may have been buried in this state in mistake for death.” The following case, contributed by Dr. Gooch, will further illustrate this malady:--