“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....