“People who read stories are said to have excitable brains.”
Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time - Vol. II [Bernhard Tauchnitz] ( p. 57 https://books.google.com/books?id=sKYzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA57)
Also in Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide by Andrew Collins & Catherine Peters [Oxford University Press, 1998] (p. 139)