he appeared to grow
impatient, and would say, she could not tell what to do, for she could
neither see nor move. In all these circumstances her pulse continued
unaffected as in health. And when the paroxysm was over, she could never
recollect a single idea of what had passed in it.

This astonishing disease, after the use of many other medicines and
applications in vain, was cured by very large doses of opium given about an
hour before the expected returns of the paroxysms; and after a few
relapses, at the intervals of three or four months, entirely disappeared.
But she continued at times to have other symptoms of epilepsy.

3. We shall only here consider, what happened during the time of her
reveries, as that is our present subject; the fits of convulsion belong to
another part of this treatise. Sect. XXXIV. 1. 4.

There seems to have been no suspension of volition during the fits of
reverie, because she endeavoured to regain the lost idea in repeating the
lines of poetry, and deliberated about breaking the tuberose, and suspected
the tea to have been medicated.

4. The ideas and muscular movements depending on sensation were exerted
with their usual vivacity, and were kept from being inconsistent by the
power of volition, as appeared from her whole conversation, and was
explained in Sect. XVII. 3. 7. and XVIII. 16.

5. The ideas and motions dependant on irritation during the first weeks of
her disease, whilst the reverie was complete, were never succeeded by the
sensation of pleasure or pain; as she neither saw, heard, nor felt any of
the surrounding objects. Nor was it certain that any irritative motions
succeeded the stimulus of external objects, till the reverie became less
complete, and then she could walk about the room without running against
the furniture of it. Afterwards, when the reverie became still less
complete from the use of opium, some few irritations were at times
succeeded by her attention to them. As when she smelt at a tuberose, and
drank a dish of tea, but this only when she seemed voluntarily to attend to
them.

6. In common life when we listen to distant sounds, or wish to distinguish
objects in the night, we are obliged strongly to exert our volition to
dispose the organs of sense to perceive them, and to suppress the other
trains of ideas, which might interrupt these feeble sensations. Hence in
the present history the strongest stimuli were not perceived, except when
the faculty of volit