"Cataleptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under his own observation; and, as this case is exactly similar to that of the Prophet, it may amuse the reader to see how far an ancient fable may be illustrated, and in part explained, by the records of modern science. Dr. Cheyne's patient was probably cataleptic; but the worthy physician must be allowed to tell his ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... representing the patron scholars of the mediaeval world: the theologians, law-givers and logicians under whose protection the free city had placed its budding liberties. There they sat, rigid and sumptuous on their Gothic thrones: Origen, Zeno, David, Lycurgus, Aristotle; listening in a kind of cataleptic helplessness to a confession of faith that scattered their doctrines to the winds. As he looked and listened, a weary sense of the reiterance of things came over him. For what were these ancient manipulators of ideas, prestidigitators ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... motionless, moveless; fixed; stationary; immotile; at rest at a stand, at a standstill, at anchor; stock, still; standing still &c v.; sedentary, untraveled, stay-at-home; becalmed, stagnant, quiet; unmoved, undisturbed, unruffled; calm, restful; cataleptic; immovable &c (stable) 150; sleeping &c (inactive) 683; silent &c 403; still as a statue, still as a post, still as a mouse, still as death; vegetative, vegetating. Adv. at a stand &c adj.; tout court; at the halt. Int. stop!, stay!, avast!, halt!, hold hard!, whoa!, hold!, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... part in their weird dances, during which extraordinary contortions are performed, and strange positions assumed, the body of the dancer being eventually reduced to a cataleptic state, in which it remains for a great length ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... about their work, and Schmucke looked on precisely as an idiot might have done. Broken down with sorrow, wholly absorbed, in a half-cataleptic state, he could not take his eyes from the face that seemed to fascinate him, Pons' face refined by the absolute repose of Death. Schmucke hoped to die; everything was alike indifferent. If the room had been on fire he would ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard. He was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith, and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen at a prayer-meeting into a trance or cataleptic fit, which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... lady, though not insensible, became paralyzed with horror, and remained in a kind of cataleptic trance, fully conscious, but unable to move or speak, until, at nine o'clock next day, no answer having been given to repeated calls of her maid, the doors were forced open. At the same moment the power of speech returned, and the poor young lady shrieked ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... without its aid would have been impossible. And now, if you like, I will initiate you into the secret of my power, which is very simple after all, and which, once known, will enable you to do everything that I can do. First of all, however, I propose to throw you into a cataleptic sleep, in order that, while you are in that condition, I may imbue you with an absolute faith in yourself, without which everything that I can teach you would be practically useless, at least until ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... writers of all such letters would merely read over what they have written, and ask themselves if they could find pleasure in receiving messages of like manner and matter, perhaps they might begin to do a little thinking, and break the habit of cataleptic unthinkingness that seemingly descends upon them as soon as they are seated ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... stone expelling the disease." So far Dom Chifflet. It seems almost as if we were reading Reichenbach. "He (Reichenbach) found that crystals are capable of producing all the phenomena resulting from the action of a magnet on cataleptic patients. Thus, for instance, a large piece of rock crystal, placed in the hand of a nervous patient, affects the fingers so as to make them grasp the crystal involuntarily, and shut the fist. Reichenbach found that more than half of all the persons he tried were sensible ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... descended from the roof, to walk in silent circles around the champion, regarding him with a species of cataleptic awe. Presently, however, Pete came to earth, extended his paw, and delivered ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lasted for an unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. Then it was ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... was entered as "Recriminator," and that the rest of the deputation had refused to give him a warranty. He sprang up with angry activity; he placed his left hand on his breast, the right hand he extended with cataleptic rigidity, and with an expression of countenance which I can only compare to that of an injured female of spotless virtue, he began, "You, sir—yes, I say, you, sir—you presume to speak of the slave—you, sir, who come ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... into the venture as did Mr. Carnegie. Like Nature, Andrew Carnegie is a good deal of a schemer. Ask a town to start in and raise three thousand dollars a year for library purposes, and the whole Common Council, His Honor the Mayor, and the Board of Education will throw a cataleptic fit. But get them fired with a desire to secure thirty thousand dollars from Mr. Carnegie, and they make the promise to love, honor, obey—and maintain—and strangely enough, they do. An action for non-support is a mighty disgraceful thing. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... screw-heads, he selected a turnscrew and, with a few deft twirls at each of the screws, they stood up like little rows of mushrooms, and the lid was raised. I saw the light, of which I thought I had seen my last, once more; but the axis of vision remained fixed. As I was reduced to the cataleptic state in a position nearly perpendicular, I continued looking straight before me, and thus my gaze was now fixed upon the ceiling. I saw the face of Carmaignac leaning over me with a curious frown. It seemed to me that there was no recognition in ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... contending with a pride of self-control which holds her from sheer frenzy! The cheeks are pale, the lips white with agony, the chin and throat most exquisitely rounded. The figure sits and leans forward in the chair, straining and rigid, cataleptic with horror. The dress is black velvet, a jewel gleams like a flame in the breast, and a golden crucifix smoulders in the shadow of a fold. This is the lady whose image still lives in the old silver mirror. What dire deed could it be which has ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he got there, is necessarily omniscient; we do not find that Mr Poe's conjectures on these mysterious topics gather any weight whatever from the authority of the spokesman to whom he has intrusted them. We are not quite persuaded that a cataleptic patient sees very clearly what is going on at the other side of our own world; when this has been made evident to us, we shall be prepared to give him credit for penetrating into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... as from a cataleptic sleep. "You can't have understood what I told you that night. This was not a quarrel at all, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... saying that the achievement in question is one which only some of the high initiates are qualified to attempt, which exacts a total suspension of animation in the body for periods of time compared to which the longest cataleptic trances known to ordinary science are insignificant; the protection of the physical frame from natural decay during this period by means which the resources of occult science are strained to accomplish; and withal it is a process involving a double risk to the continued ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... nobleman who is now resident in England,' it runs, 'would be glad to avail himself of the professional assistance of Dr. Percy Trevelyan. He has been for some years a victim to cataleptic attacks, on which, as is well known, Dr. Trevelyan is an authority. He proposes to call at about quarter past six to-morrow evening, if Dr. Trevelyan will make it convenient to be ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... us, presents a spacious picture of the development of our civilisation during the next two hundred years. The sleeper is a typical liberal-minded man of means of the nineteenth century, and he awakens from a cataleptic trance in the year 2100, to discover that by an ironic combination of circumstances he has become the central figure of an enormous political convulsion. His attempt to rise to the responsibilities of his position, his struggle for power—inspired by an enthusiastic ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... and she had a complexion compared with which strawberries and cream were nowhere. When she was sent to the piano, to show people what the Moodle system could do in the way of a musical education, I fell into a cataleptic state and floated off upon a flood of harmony. Miss Moodle and her mits, self and lemon kids, even the sleepless eye of Barker, watching for an indiscretion, upon the strength of which he might defensibly send ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... his cataleptic state, which was both a mental and physical effect, and stood up. The air was still dim with heavy clouds and the wind continuously whistled its anger. He noticed for the first time that it was raining, but it was a trifle to him, as he had already been thoroughly soaked ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attack that frightened me dreadfully. She became perfectly insensible—her little limbs were stiff and cold. There is one doctor here who has not yet abandoned the town. Of course I sent for him. He thought her insensibility was caused by a sort of cataleptic seizure. At the same time, he comforted me by saying that she was in no immediate danger of death; and he left me certain remedies to be given, if certain symptoms appeared. I took her to bed, and held her to me, with the idea of keeping her warm. Without believing in mesmerism, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... defrauding his neighbor. When I was a boy in old Kentucky the colored people used to hold great revivals; they generally selected corn-planting-time or harvest-time for these meetings. Many of them would lie for days in a cataleptic condition, which, they said, was a "conviction of the Spirit." A man would go groaning and moping to his task because he was "under conviction of the Holy Ghost." The above passage teaches nothing of the kind, nor does any ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to him that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in their Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that Silas's cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred with the general sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... to think that, if the same thing were done for you, you would say he was only in a cataleptic fit, and in truth was never raised from the dead. Or is there another way of understanding your behaviour: you do not believe that God is unchangeable, but think he acts one way one time and another way another time just from caprice? He might give back a brother ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... compiler of the standard American dictionary, narrates a story in point which could be matched from other sources. He tells of an American doctor of his acquaintance, and he vouches personally for the truth of the incident. This doctor, in the course of a cataleptic seizure in Florida, was aware that he had left his body, which he saw lying beside him. He had none the less preserved his figure and his identity. The thought of some friend at a distance came into his mind, and after ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the Keinplatz wochenliche Medicalschrift about this time, and which surprised the whole scientific world—"it is evident that under certain conditions the soul or mind does separate itself from the body. In the case of a mesmerised person, the body lies in a cataleptic condition, but the spirit has left it. Perhaps you reply that the soul is there, but in a dormant condition. I answer that this is not so, otherwise how can one account for the condition of clairvoyance, which ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me of an incident I have several times witnessed in our woods in connection with a snake commonly called the sissing or blowing adder. When I have teased this snake a few moments with my cane, it seems to be seized with an epileptic or cataleptic fit. It throws itself upon its back, coiled nearly in the form of a figure eight, and begins a series of writhings and twistings and convulsive movements astonishing to behold. Its mouth is open and presently full of leaf-mould, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if cataleptic, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them.—What is there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... nature, which I have not as yet been able to identify." To his brother, 3rd September, 1848. Severe disappointment or annoyance always had a great effect upon him; on the occasion of his first marriage he fell into a sort of cataleptic condition as a result of the opposition of his parents and relations, who sought to oppose it. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to look through his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining Ones were not within range of sight—sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks that carried them by the peaceful common, through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadows of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their harmless stroll—the 'patulous fage,' in the Professor's classic dialect—the spreading beech, in more familiar phrase—[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... a fluid ounce of fool! And so may we label all mankind. For instance: the Governor is a wise man and a politic; Wilson a good man and a pious; Dimsdell—ah! there I pause, for what fine formula can sum the qualities of that same Arthur Dimsdell? He's not a fool; nor mad; nor truly cataleptic—yet he's moody, falls in trance, and I suspect his power as a preacher comes from ecstasy. Something he is akin to genius—yet he hath it not, for though his aim be true enough, he often flashes in the pan when genius would have hit the mark. I'll write his ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... connected with the insensibility of the body and the organs of the senses—lead us to believe, that in somnambulism there is an increased intensity of sleep, producing an extreme degree of unconsciousness in regard to the physical organization, very similar to that which we find in hysterical, cataleptic, and many other nervous affections. The mental phenomena exhibited in this state are those connected with exaggerated dreams, and as the physiology of dreams is by no means well understood in the healthy state, still less can they be explained ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... things—that woman I told you about, and three men. One of 'em is you, the other two is Mexicans. You're at a water-hole in the mesquite. Now there's a shooting scrape; I see the body of a dead man." The speaker became silent; evidently his cataleptic vision was far from perfect. But he soon began to drone again. "Now I behold a stranger at the same water-hole. He's alone—he's looking for something. He rides in circles. He's off his horse and bending over—What? A skeleton! Yes, it's ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... excoriation from smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair- triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administering a touch ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... enough to be well covered with hair, and some were not detached by a blow which disabled the dam. We could not decide whether any involuntary muscles were brought into play in helping the young to adhere. Their weight seemed to require a sort of cataleptic state of the muscles of the jaw, to enable them to ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... it, for I could not. The whole of that five minutes' work slipped from my mind, and was gone quite and clean when I awoke. What I saw I could not interrupt. I was in a cataleptic state, I suppose. I could not speak; but I saw like a lynx, and heard every whisper. When I awakened in the morning I remembered nothing. I did not know I had a secret. The knowledge was sealed up until the time came. A sight of Charles Archer's face at ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lay an embargo on. Adj. quiescent, still; motionless, moveless; fixed; stationary; immotile; at rest at a stand, at a standstill, at anchor; stock, still; standing still &c. v.; sedentary, untraveled, stay-at-home; becalmed, stagnant, quiet; unmoved, undisturbed, unruffled; calm, restful; cataleptic; immovable &c. (stable) 150; sleeping &c. (inactive) 683; silent &c. 403; still as a statue, still as a post, still as a mouse, still as death; vegetative, vegetating. Adv. at a stand &c. adj.; tout court; at the halt. Int. stop! stay! avast! halt! hold hard! whoa! hold! sabr karo[obs3]!. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... into a deep sleep by means that would be totally ineffectual in another, and even then the mental states differ in each individual—that which in one induces a gentle slumber may plunge his neighbor into a deep cataleptic state." ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus |
