FARM COLONIES FOR EPILEPTICS. 805 
INDUSTRIAL FARM COLONIES FOR 
EPILEPTICS. 
By Miss Avice HENRY. 
[ Abstract. | 
EpiLersy may be considered the most terrible of all mala- 
dies that afflict humanity. It is the most cruel to the 
patient himself, the most dangerous to society, and the most 
far-reaching in its results. 
It is through its secondary effects that the patient chiefly 
suffers. He is subject to attacks of an exhausting nature, 
and runs the risks of accident to life and limb during such 
attacks; and, in addition, others so shrink from him on 
account of these fits that he is turned into a social outcast, 
a victim to all the degrading influences that surround the 
outcast. 
It is the most dangerous to society because the epileptic 
may, during his attacks and in absolute unconsciousness 
injure others by setting fire to dwelling-houses, by striking 
aimlessly with edged tools, or in any one of a hundred other 
ways. Many crimes even, so-called, have been committed 
during the periods of dream unconsciousness that in some 
cases form one of the phases of this protean disease, and 
society is at present quite unprotected against such risks. 
Epilepsy is also the most far-reaching in its effects, for it 
is not only to his own generation that the patient is a 
danger. Affected by a transmissible degeneracy of the 
nervous system, the epileptic in many cases leaves behind 
him offspring even more abnormal and nervously unstable 
than himself. 
The medical definition of epilepsy is that it is a nervous 
affection, with seizures of loss of consciousness accompanied 
by convulsions. In a typical fit the patient is in ordinary 
health. He may be at a meal, coming down stairs, sitting 
alone by the fire, or walking along the edge of a pier. 
Instantly, without any warning, he falls down wherever he 
may happen to be, so that broken limbs, burns, and other 
physical injuries are not at all uncommon. In most cases, 
however, after the violence of the paroxysm has exhausted 
itself, the patient falls asleep, and wakes a few hours after- 
wards able, to all appearance, to take up his work where 
he left it off. Apd then the trouble begins, for no one will 
have him. 
So one of the most recent movements, having for its 
object the alleviation of human suffering and the wise 
