was not sensible at this time, any more than formerly, of seeing or hearing any person about her; indeed when great light was thrown upon her by opening the shutters of the window, her trains of ideas seemed less melancholy; and when I have forcibly held her hands, or covered her eyes, she 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 volition was exerted on the organ of sense; and then even common stimuli were sometimes perceived:  for her mind was so strenuously employed in pursuing its own trains of voluntary or sensitive