96 Civic DX, 225,000 miles, auto, D16Y7 engine.

Trying to help a friend with his (actually his wife's) Civic.  Since this is
the wife's car I really can't get any info on maintenance.  When I ask his
wife about when was this or that done/changed, I just get the stare of "you
expect me to know that?"

Car starts fine and idles fine.  Cruises at speed and decelerates fine.
Problem occurs only on acceleration.  When accelerating the engine always
hesitates to some degree, and on most occasions it stalls.  The car will
restart without difficulty, but it goes right back to the
hesitation/stalling under acceleration.  Does this hot or cold.   For those
of you that ever owned a carburated car it feels just like a broken
accelerator pump. Even with all of the stalling, there are no codes set in
the ECU.

With no codes stored it makes me think it is something more conventional
like plugs, wires, cap, rotor, timing, ect.  The only test we ran so far was
a misting of the plug wires to check for insulation breaks.  No arcing,
sputtering or stalling with that test.  I know I need to check the plugs and
check the cap for burns/cracks, but before I go much further I would like to
know if anyone has experienced such a problem with their Civic.

Any help would be much appreciated.