657 



CATALEPSY. 



CATALOGUE. 



658 



them, a labyrinth of tombs running through it in all directions. From 

 the bam-rilieri, figures in terra cotta, and other works of art found in 

 them, it was evident that these tombs were of a date far anterior to the 

 Christian epoch. 



In Egypt these subterraneous excavations occur in all parts of 

 the country where there is rock, but they have neither the extent 

 nor the form of those of Rome or Naples. Those of Abousir are 

 no doubt very extensive, but they have not yet been fully explored. 

 There are extensive excavations near Alexandria, which appear from 

 the style of the ornamental parts to belong to the Greek period. 

 The anxiety of the Egyptians to preserve from decay the bodies of 

 their friends and the bodies of sacred animals, may sufficiently account 

 for the number of these excavations, and for their being so well 

 tenanted. For an account of these excavations the reader may consult 

 Belzoni, Salt, Poeocke, Legh, Henniker, or any respectable modern 

 traveller in Egypt, and the works of Sir G. Wilkinson. In Peru, and 

 in some other parts of South America, both mummies and catacombs 

 have been discovered. The mummies however are frequently buried 

 in the sand, and the size of the catacombs can bear no comparison 

 with the extent of those of Italy and Egypt. 



The catacombs at Paris could not be called catacombs with any 

 propriety until recent tunes, when, by a decree of the French govern- 

 ment, all the churchyards within the city which had been crammed to 

 a loathsome and dangerous degree, were emptied of their contents, and 

 the skulls and bones sent to the spacious subterranean quarries, where 

 they are now arranged in a manner that is grotesquely horrible. 



CATALEPSY, or TRANCE (from the Greek KanCAijifuj, cataltpsis, 

 literally, "a seizing"), to which is closely allied eztasy, or the extatic 

 trance, is a disease of the nervous system, attended with an abolition 

 of sensation, and of intellectual operation, and with a peculiar con- 

 dition of the muscles of voluntary motion, those muscles retaining 

 during the paroxysm precisely the same position they were in at the 

 moment of the attack, while the action of the heart and the respiratory 

 functions are but little affected. The malady consists of a great dis- 

 turbance or an absolute suspension of the functions of the animal life, 

 while the processes of the organic life go on with comparatively little 

 change. 



A lively description of a person labouring under a paroxysm of this 

 disease has been given by Dr. Jebb : " My patient," says this physician, 

 who is describing the condition of a young lady who was the subject 

 of this curious malady, " 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 deathlike sleep, beyond the power of art to imitate, or the imagina- 

 tion to conceive. Her forehead was serene, her features perfectly com- 

 posed. 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." 



This disease is so rare, while it is not unfrequently feigned, that a 

 suspicion has been excited as to the reality of its existence. Without 

 doubt it is often assumed, and that under circumstances which afford no 

 assignable motive for the deception ; but still cases are on record, of which 

 that which has just been recited may be taken as an example, which 

 leave no room to doubt that the affection is not invariably simulated, 

 but is sometimes, though not often, a real disease. The disease, when 

 undoubtedly real, is attended with a disturbed state of almost all the 

 functions of the body. There is commonly severe headache, often 

 giddiness, noise in the ears, lassitude, languor, fyawning, a disturbed 

 condition of the gastric and intestinal organs, and, more especially, in 

 the male, of the biliary, and, in the female, of the uterine organs. The 

 functions of the spinal cord and brain are at the same time disordered. 

 The whole muscular system is preternaturally irritable or mobile; 

 there is present a long train of symptoms, commonly termed nervous ; 

 the intellectual operations are dull and confused, and the temper is 

 mutable and irascible. 



During the paroxysm, which commonly comes on quite suddenly, the 

 patient retains precisely the same posture of the body as at the moment 

 f tin: attack; even the expression of the countenance which existed 

 at that instant remains unchanged as long as the paroxysm lasts ; the 

 eyes, whether open or shut, are perfectly fixed ; any position in which 

 any ]>art of the body under the influence of the voluntary muscles may 

 be placed, as the head, the trunk, or the limbs, is retained without the 

 slightest deviation ; this fixedness and unchangeableness in the atti- 

 tude giving to the subject of the malady a striking resemblance to 

 a statue. 



The countenance during the paroxysm is almost always paler than 

 natural, though it is stated that it has occasionally been observed to be 

 slightly flushed. The skin in general is unusually cold, excepting 

 about the head, where the heat is sometimes even greater than natural, 

 indicating a preternatural determination of blood to the brain, as well 

 as to all the textures that surround it. The action of the heart is so 

 greatly depressed, that it is often altogether imperceptible, and when 

 capable of being distinguished, it ia either slow, occasionally below 



ABTg ASD SCI. DIV, VOL. II. 



50 in the minute, or quick and small. The respiration is sometimes 

 incapable of being distinguished, and is never natural ; while the pro- 

 cesses of secretion and excretion are performed so languidly as to 

 give little or no indication of their existence; and so, the animal 

 functions being abolished, and the organic being performed in so 

 languid a manner as to be imperceptible, the person is sometimes 

 supposed to be actually dead. 



After a period of very uncertain duration, sometimes comprehending 

 only a few minutes, and at other times many hours, occasionally, as is 

 stated, even days, consciousness returns generally with the same 

 suddenness as the attack commenced, the return to consciousness 

 being accompanied with sighing, and followed by pain or confusion in 

 the head, and a sense of lassitude and fatigue. No memory is retained 

 of anything that may have passed during the paroxysm, the very same 

 train of ideas returning when consciousness is restored as were present 

 at the instant it ceased ; and even, according to some narratives, the 

 very same sentences which had been suspended by the seizure being 

 pursued at the moment of recovery. 



In the most severe form of the paroxysm, sensation, intellectual 

 operation, and voluntary motion are entirely abolished ; but when the 

 attack is less complete, consciousness is retained. Still there is no 

 power of making the slightest movement of any part of the body, nor 

 even of producing so much as an articulate sound; and several striking 

 and even appalling cases of this latter modification of the disease are on 

 record. 



The modification of cataleptic disorder which constitutes the affec- 

 tion termed extasy is generally induced by mental excitement and 

 sustained contemplation of some particular subject, most generally of a 

 religious nature, and more especially when such subjects have raised 

 the passions and engaged the affections. " The patient suddenly seems 

 mentally struck or carried away from all external objects; either 

 standing or sitting in a most excited and impassioned position, with 

 the eyes fixed and open; and sometimes uttering either the most 

 enthusiastic and fervid expressions, or the most earnest denunciations 

 and warnings, or the most absurd exclamations, with the feeling or 

 belief of their reality ; and total abstraction from, or unconsciousness 

 of, all surrounding objects or persons." 



Such of the cases as were not feigned which some years ago made so 

 much noise in London under the idea of inspiration with " unknown 

 tongues," belong to this affection ; the effects produced by the practisers 

 of animal magnetism upon nervous persons are obviously allied to it ; 

 and the faculty of improvisation is rarely possessed but under a state 

 of the system perfectly analogous to it ; while few who are endowed 

 with this power are in a state of sound health, or consider their faculty 

 otherwise than as a morbid one. 



The hypochondriac, the melancholic, and the hysterical tempera- 

 ments are by much the most predisposed to this disease, while the 

 paroxysm is commonly excited remotely by some disorder of the 

 biliary and digestive organs, or by a suppression or some irregularity 

 of the catamenia ; and directly by some powerful mental emotion. 



The treatment of the malady must be different in every different 

 case, according to the particular condition of the system, and the 

 nature of the exciting cause. If some derangement of the physical 

 health be the primary cause of the disease, as is almost always the case, 

 the indications of which will commonly be found, if looked for, in the 

 disturbed functions of the brain, the stomach, the liver, the uterus, &c., 

 such remedies must be applied as are calculated to restore these 

 diseased organs to a sound condition. 



CATALOGUE (Astronomy.) This is the name given to a list of 

 stars with the means of determining their positions annexed, whether 

 latitudes and longitudes, or right ascensions and declinations. Such 

 a catalogue is not only a register of the stars in question, but also gives 

 the means of computing the effects of precession, aberration, and nuta- 

 tion, and thus finding the absolute place of the star in the heavens at 

 any given time. Another species of catalogue is a register only, being 

 a list of objects which are looked at, not for the purposes of geography 

 or navigation, but as connected with purely physical investigations, 

 such as double stars, nebula), &c. The places of the objects are only 

 given to such a degree of nearness as will enable the future observer to 

 lay his telescope upon them. We may place in this list all catalogues 

 of comets; and the whole of this second class requires no further 

 description. 



Our own actual knowledge of astronomy, so far as the position of 

 the heavenly bodies is concerned, is contained in the catalogues of stars 

 and the Planetary Tables, the latter of which furnish, not the places of 

 the planets, but the elements by which those places are determined. 

 The names of the principal catalogues will be found in their proper 

 places in the article ASTRONOMY, and there would be no use in 

 repeating them here. 



A catalogue, such as is now constructed, shows at one given time 

 the places of a number of stars in right ascension and declination, to 

 which are usually annexed various auxiliary quantities to aid in the 

 reduction of the catalogue to another epoch. These, though useful, 

 are not necessary parts, since they might be supplied by each person 

 for himself, whereas nothing could replace the actual observation 

 made at or near the epoch in question. For the instruments employed 

 in the construction of a catalogue see TRANSIT INSTRUMENT, and CIRCLE. 

 The regular work of an observatory, so far as the stars are concerned, 



