6. The organic life may exist after the animal life has perished. The animal life is extinguished when sensation is abolished, and voluntary motion can be performed no more. But disease may abolish sensation and destroy the power of voluntary motion, while circulation, respiration, secretion, excretion, in a word, the entire circle of the organic functions continues to be performed. In a single instant apoplexy may reduce to drivelling fatuity the most exalted intellect, and render powerless and motionless muscles of gigantic strength; while the action of the heart and the involuntary contractions of the muscles may not only not be weakened, but may act with preternatural energy. In a single instant, apoplexy may even completely extinguish the animal life, and yet the organic may go on for hours, days, and even weeks; while catalepsy, perhaps the most singular disease to which the human frame is subject, may wholly abolish sensation and volition, while it may impart to the voluntary muscles the power of contracting with such unnatural energy and continuity, that the head, the trunk, the limbs may become immoveably fixed in whatever attitude they happen to be at the moment the paroxysm comes on. In this extraordinary condition of the nervous system, however long the paroxysm last, and however complete the abolition of consciousness, the heart continues to beat, and the pulse to throb, and the lungs to respire, and all the organic organs to perform their ordinary functions. Dr. Jebb gives the following description of the condition of a young lady who was the subject of this curious malady. "My patient was seized with an attack just as I was announced. At that moment she was employed in netting; she was in the act of passing the needle through the mesh; in that position she became immoveably rigid, exhibiting, in a 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, and her breathing, which at a distance was scarcely perceptible, operated in rendering the similitude to marble more exact and striking. The position of her fingers, hands, and arms was altered with difficulty, but 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."