"Catalepsis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, Lucie underwent a kind of catalepsy, after which she returned to the somnambulic state; but that state was deeper than before. She no longer made any sign whether of assent or refusal when she received the hypnotic commands, but she executed them infallibly, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I bethought me of adding to my order, the words, 'with nice vegetables.' Looking out at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her already in a state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking her teeth with ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the great phenomenon of these gospels,—the casting out of devils,—pressed forcibly on my attention. I now dared to look full into the facts, and saw that the disorders described were perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania, catalepsy, and other known maladies. Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunchbacked, are spoken of as devil-ridden. I farther knew that such diseases are still ascribed to evil genii in Mussulman countries: even a vicious ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... animals, and the time, all clear, and half of the character of Karshish. The inner character of the man emerges as clearly when he comes to deal with Lazarus. This is not a case of the body, he thinks, but of the soul. "The Syrian," he tells his master, "has had catalepsy, and a learned leech of his nation, slain soon afterwards, healed him and brought him back to life after three days. He says he was dead, and made alive again, but that is his madness; though the man seems sane enough. At any rate, his disease has disappeared, he is as well as you and I. But ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... showing the difference between that and the genuine spirit trance. Any competent magnetist or hypnotiser can throw off the spell in all cases of self-induced trance, unless it has reached the condition of complete catalepsy. But if a spirit has induced the trance and controls the medium, it will laugh at the hypnotist's efforts to restore him to the ordinary condition. The most unfortunate feature of this sorry business is that the poor subject is self-deceived, and imagines that he is a full-fledged medium; ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... warped in the moulding.—That is nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times,—if it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,—transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the table nearly all at once. But she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... me, pinioned hand and foot In catalepsy—say I should have known That trance had not yet darkened into death, And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I knew? Sum up the facts—her life against her death. Her life? The scum upon the pools of ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... feeling, perception; excitement. Associated Words: aesthesiology, sensorium, sentient, sensific, sensory, sentiency, insentient, sensifacient, sensiferous, sensificatory, sensitive, aesthesiometer, aesthesiogen, catalepsy, anaesthesia. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... their intensity and want of balance have the generally accepted characteristics of hysteria. Some of them have been religious, great awakenings, revivals and the like. These in their more extreme form have been marked by trances, shoutings and catalepsy and, more normally, by a popular interest, strongly emotionalized, which may possess a real religious value. Other religious movements have centered about the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Many of these peculiar ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... preserve the sight, the smoak being let in round about the balls once a week, &c." We have even known snuff to be blown into the eyes to cure inflammation. This latter remedy should be somewhat perilous, if what Sauvages relates be true, that a female was thrown into a catalepsy by a small portion of snuff which had accidentally entered her eye. The Rev. S. Wesley, speaking of the abuse of tobacco, intimates an apprehension that the human ear will not long remain exempted from ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... looked at Lucille, and saw her half-unconscious with fear, leaning against it, leaning against that soft, resilient, cushionlike, invisible substance; looked at Parrish, whom the shock had thrown into a sort of semi-catalepsy—Parrish, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... slave and apparently unhurt. But as I stood over her a line of foam bubbled out of her blue lips. Her eyes were meaningless. I had frightened her into catalepsy, and I ground my teeth at my ill luck, for she could have told me something of the woman. I took my brandy flask and tried to pry ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... same time a doctor of Lyons, Petetin, experimented with magnetism. After his death a paper written by him was published describing catalepsy and sense transference. Numerous magnetic societies were founded in the principal cities of France. In Strasburg, the Society of Harmony, consisting of more than one hundred and fifty members, published for years the result of their work. The disturbance incident to the Revolution and the wars of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the old term used to designate certain phenomena, which, originally, was supposed to be a force that emanated from the mesmerist. It is now known that hypnotism may be regarded as artificial catalepsy." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... mental abstraction; and, in truth, in those asylums provided for the insane, we find many of their inmates to be persons who have fallen into that deplorable state through religious enthusiasm. There are other cases in which these excesses in devotion have ended in catalepsy; and some of those women who have been celebrated for the supernatural state in which it has been pretended they lived for many years, without food, and insensible to all external impressions, have ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... words—"The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth"? Not certainly that, as we regard the difference between death and sleep, his words were to be taken literally; not that she was only in a state of coma or lethargy; not even that it was a case of suspended animation as in catalepsy; for the whole narrative evidently intends us to believe that she was dead after the fashion we call death. That this was not to be dead after the fashion our Lord called death, is a ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... were to be uprooted, but the forest was still, with a strange, oppressive stillness—not a twig moving, not a cloud veiling the stars, not an insect chirping. Filled with a vague fear, he tried to waken his wife, but she was like one in a state of catalepsy. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... is that which expresses the visible personality, and is permanently attached to the body; the other has the power of leaving the body, carrying with it an appearance of physical form, which accounts for a person being seen in two different places at once. Cases of catalepsy or trance are explained by the Chinese as the absence from the body of this portion of the soul, which is also believed to be expelled from the body by any violent shock or fright. There is a story of a man who was so ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Maskull waited in silence for it to speak again. All remained still, however, and the speaker appeared to have taken his departure. Supernatural horror seized him; he fell into a sort of catalepsy. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... — N. rest; stillness &c. adj.; quiescence; stagnation, stagnancy; fixity, immobility, catalepsy; indisturbance[obs3]; quietism. quiet, tranquility, calm; repose &c. 687; peace; dead calm, anticyclone|!; statue-like repose; silence &c. 203; not a breath of air, not a mouse stirring; sleep &c. (inactivity) 683. pause, lull &c. (cessation) 142; stand still; standing still &c. v.; lock; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... descended from his pulpit, and precisely as the sun attained the zenith laid his hand upon the bosom of the young prince, who instantly revived, and completed a sentence touching the game of dice which had been interrupted by his catalepsy. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... not always affected in the same manner by a looking-glass. Sometimes it seemed to madden him with fury; at other times, it appeared to turn him to stone: remaining motionless and speechless as if attacked by catalepsy. One night—the worst things always happen at night, and oftener than one would think on stormy nights—we arrived at a small town in the central district of Auvergne: a place but little known, out of the line of railways, and to which we had been drawn, partly by the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... contradicts the Biblical narratives of the raising of the "dead" to life is seemingly ignorant of facts that go far to place these upon firm ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy, or the simulation of death by a trance, in which the body is sometimes cold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart still, is well known to medical men.[13] In early times such a condition would inevitably have been regarded and treated as actual death, without the least suspicion ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... conceivable from the scenes referred to in my last letter, which are witnessed at religious revivals. One person became hysterical, then another; one was seized with catalepsy, then others; some with convulsions; some with palpitations of the heart, perspirations, and other bodily disturbances. These effects, however various and different, went all by the name of "salutary crises." The method was supposed to produce, in the sick person, exactly the kind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... palpitating body, her quivering thighs, breaks the energy, melts the will, of a king; she has become the symbolic deity of indestructible Lust, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the accursed Beauty, chosen among many by the catalepsy that has stiffened her limbs, that has hardened her muscles; the monstrous, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible Beast, poisoning, like Helen of old, all that go near to her, all that look upon her, all that ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... far to point out a new line of investigation, which promises to yield valuable results. So much of them as concerns our subject, may be very briefly stated. It would appear that certain persons with disordered nervous systems, liable to catalepsy, or to such affections, and also some healthy persons who are of a peculiar nervous temperament, are more sensitive to magnetism than their neighbors. They are peculiarly acted upon by the magnet, and are, moreover, very much under the influence ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... of that. Perhaps only in a state resembling catalepsy. We must wait. Jack, take her into the lobby. Put her ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... himself across her feet and lay there—a situation which will occupy us later—and Eisener, who was just now returning, was driven by the bitterest self reproaches across the ocean. After waking from her catalepsy Maria did not regain her former blooming health but grew more and more ill, which the family physician finally discovered as ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... "returning to himself," etc.) as a sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been. Further verification is afforded by every epileptic subject, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Slavishness (see Gregarious and Slavish Instincts) Smith, B. Woodd; curious Number-Form communicated by Smythe, G.F. Snakes, horror of some persons at; antipathy to, not common among mankind Socrates and his catalepsy Solitude Sound, association of colour with Space and time Spain, the races in Speke, Capt. Spencer, H., blended outlines Spiritual sense, the Stars of great men Statistical methods; statistical constancy; that ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... or even of imparting a gleam of promise, a furtive flash of allurement to her eyes. With her hands crossed on her stomach, and resting against the front of the public-house, with her whole body as stiff as if she had been in a state of catalepsy, she had nothing alluring about her, except her sad smile, and that inspired us with all the more pity because she was even more drunk than we were, and so, by identical, spontaneous movement, we each of us seized her by an arm, to take her into the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... friendly fakir has given him for that purpose. A "sleep-thorn," or other somniferous piece of wood, is commonly employed in our fairy tales, in order to throw a hero or heroine into a magic slumber. In these Indian stories a state of catalepsy, or of death, is produced or relieved by a peculiar application of a magic stick. Thus the Princess who was called the Golden Rani, "because her teeth and her hair were made of gold," and who was stolen by a demon, informed the Prince who found ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... a sort of slumber, from which no one tried to rouse him,—a species of catalepsy, in which the body lived and suffered while the functions of the mind were in abeyance. This respite, bestowed by chance, was looked upon by Constance, Cesarine, Pillerault, and Derville as a blessing from God. And they judged rightly: Cesar was thus enabled to bear the harrowing ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... replaced the dislocated limbs,—sometimes, would you believe it monsieur? three and four times a day! Ah!—This disease has so many forms that I forgot to tell you that during the first period of weakness, before the paralysis began, the strangest signs of catalepsy appeared—you know what catalepsy is. She remained for days with her eyes wide open, motionless, in whatever position she was when the attack seized her. The worst symptoms of that strange affection were shown, even those ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... found! Well, young lady, this is a pretty performance! What do you mean by shocking your fond relatives and friends almost into catalepsy? I happened to drop in at the studio just as Joyce got your message, and she and Betty were at their wits' end to ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... she, "that you go too far; there is no present danger; the doctors say it is catalepsy, which often attacks persons of a nervous temperament upon the receipt ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... you that the Marquis d'Harmonville had not extinguished his carriage lamp on going into this village inn. I was listening intently, longing for his return, which might result, by some lucky accident, in awaking me from my catalepsy. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have heard? Catalepsy? It may seem strange to you at first, but I can assure you ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... years ago, when I first landed in Bombay, I had been told by a wandering Armenian of the existence, somewhere in India, of a place to which such Hindus as had the misfortune to recover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed and kept, and I recollect laughing heartily at what I was then pleased to consider ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said Challenger. "It has been a rare phenomenon in the past and has constantly been mistaken for death. While it endures, the temperature falls, the respiration disappears, the heartbeat is indistinguishable—in fact, it is death, save that it is evanescent. Even the most ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Sillery. Overpowered with joy, she rode behind him back to the city, and left him on nearing her home; but, to her horror, she spied dodging her footsteps her arch enemy the Intendant, and fell down in a species of fit, which turned out to be catalepsy. This furnishes, of course, a very moving tableau. The fair girl—-supposed to be dead—-was laid out in her shroud, when Raoul, during the confusion of that terrible day for French Rule, the 13th September, calling to ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... tendencies of the present day is the extraordinary interest taken in the investigation of those peculiar physical and psychical conditions attending the states now known collectively under the name of hypnotism, varying from lethargy, catalepsy, etc., to somnambulism. Until quite recently these investigations have been frowned upon and tabooed in scientific circles, and the fact that any man of scientific inclinations was known to feel an interest in matters associated with "mesmerism" or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... sudden catalepsy, I was without power to move a single muscle of my body, and for the space of two minutes remained in a stupor in the same attitude—immovable, rooted, frozen to the spot where I stood. At length recovering at once my senses and power of motion, I bounded like a maniac ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... her head. She had the air of one whose mind is elsewhere. Into her face a vacancy had come; she seemed incapable of reply; and as the guardsman scrutinized her it occurred to him that she might be on the point of having an attack of that catalepsy to which he knew her to be subject. But immediately ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus |
