Catalepsy
A condition involving the sudden suspension of sensation and volition, and the partial suspension of the vital functions. The body assumes a rigid and statuesque appearance, sometimes mistaken for death, and the patient remains unconscious throughout the attack. On occasion, the cataleptic state may be marked by symptoms of intense mental excitement, and by apparently volitional speech and action. Sometimes the symptoms are hardly distinguishable from those of hysteria. The period covered by the attack may vary from a few minutes to several days, though the latter only in exceptional cases; it may, however, recur on trifling provocation in the absence of resistence from the will-power of the patient. The affection is caused by a pathological condition of the nervous system, generally produced by severe or prolonged mental emotion, and it must not be confused with the hypnotic trance. The belief that it may occur in a perfectly healthy person is, on the whole, fallacious. There is some reason to suppose that catalepsy, like ecstacy and mediumistic faculties, may at times prove contagious. Dr. Pététin, in his Electricité Animale (1808) makes mention of as many as eight cases met with in a restricted area, although catalepsy is in ordinary circumstances of rare occurrence. Pététin also mentions certain strange phenomena witnessed by him in connection with the state of spontaneous catalepsy (see Stomach, Seeing with), which would seem to show that persons in this condition are amenable to suggestion in a high degree. The true physical reasons for catalepsy are still practically unknown to science. But there seem to be good reasons for believing that it can be self-induced in certain cases. Many Eastern fakirs have been known to cast themselves into a cataleptic sleep lasting for months and cases have even been known where they permitted themselves to be buried, being exhumed when the grass had grown over their graves. (See Dendy, Philosophy of Mystery.)