catalepsy

plural catalepsies · alternative dated catalepsis

1. medicineA severe bodily condition, described in psychiatric pathology, marked by sudden rigidity, fixation of posture, and loss of contact with environmental conditions.

   I was furious with Edgar Allan Poe for writing so accurately about this. His tales of catalepsy and live burial poisoned my childhood, and still killed me.

   1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 190

   1 more example

   "But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all, Challenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their faces!" "It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said Challenger.

   1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC