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the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of
warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek;
and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid,
unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration
of the trance is for weeks--even for months; while the closest scrutiny,
and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material
distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of
absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely
by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to
catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by
the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily,
gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The
fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a
longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal security from
inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme
character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be
consigned alive to the tomb.
My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in
medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by
little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this
condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking,
to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the
presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of
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