FLEXIBILITAS CEREA

When I was in my teens, I usually wandered about my Swedish grandmother's villa in Stora Höga. One of her treasures was the Household Book of Medicine (Hemmets läkarebok) from the 1920s, which consecrated a chapter to hypnotism and catalepsia.
What interested me the most was flexibilitas cerea, ie waxy flexibility, referred to in the aforementioned book by its Latin name. According to the daguerreotypes that illustrated the chapter, a catatonic or hypnotised person's neck, torso, and limbs can be contorted by another person into the most bizarre and outrageous shapes, into which the subject would remain fixed in that new position, still, unmoved, like wax or clay once it has hardened.
For instance, if one were to move the arm of someone with waxy flexibility, they would keep their arm where one moved it until it was moved again, as if it were made from wax. Further alteration of an individual's posture is similar to bending a candle.