catalepsy
/ˈkat(ə)lɛpsi
/noun [mass noun]
A medical condition characterized by a trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body.Furthermore, high dose morphine is well reported as a cause of rigidity, catalepsy, akathisia, and myoclonus, which must add to the difficulty of interpreting pain on the basis of observation alone....
- Indications that patients were in hypnosis included observation of eyelid fluttering, catalepsy, and slowed respiration.
- The term ‘atypical’ was originally used to describe drugs that in animal models predict antipsychotic effects but do not produce catalepsy, most notably clozapine.
Derivatives
cataleptic
/ adjective & noun ...- It was postulated that there could have been a particularly nasty strain of rabies - now extinct - in the Middle Ages that caused its sufferers to fall into a cataleptic coma that mocked death.
- Among other things, he was prone to seizures and cataleptic fits.
- Poor William was so traumatised by this procedure that he suffered a cataleptic fit that his relatives took for death.
Origin
Late Middle English: from French catalepsie or late Latin catalepsia, from Greek katalēpsis, from katalambanein 'seize upon'.