The "typhoid state" revisited

Abstract

The "typhoid state" occurs classically with typhoid and typhus fevers but is also seen in other infectious diseases. Clinical descriptions of this state as "muttering delirium" or "coma vigil" refer to the peculiar preoccupied nature of the stupor. Picking at the bedclothes and at imaginary objects (carphology and floccillation) are characteristic, as is muscular twitching (subsultus tendinum). There is strong evidence that the death of Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry V is a vivid description of the typhoid state.