806 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
utilisation, too, of human energy, is to be found in the new 
methods of dealing with epileptics. A class within a class 
are they. Those afflicted with this malady are found in 
every climate, are of both sexes, of all ages, from the tiny child 
to the old, and of every rank in life, and their affliction is 
of such a nature that it debars them from fitting into any 
ordinary niche in the social edifice. As matter in the wrong 
place means waste, trouble, and harm, so human beings 
in their wrong place, or not allotted their right place, neces- 
sarily deteriorate, are a misery to themselves and their 
immediate surroundings, and sooner or later, directly or 
indirectly, become a source of expense to someone, probably 
degenerate into insanity or sink into crime. 
The epileptic in society is an anomaly. Speaking roughly, 
he is not an invalid, except as all may be invalids sometimes ; 
he is no fit subject for the somewhat expensive mercies of 
a hospital; he cannot be put to bed and nursed perpetually 
on the lines of, say, typhoid-nursing, for between his attacks 
he may be perfectly well and strong. For the same reasons, 
there is no good object served even by shutting him up, 
supposing the law would allow it, in the semi-imprisonment 
of a benevolent asylum. He needs care whenever an acute 
attack occurs, whether that be every few hours or only at 
intervals of many months; but in the intervals, in the far 
larger part of his life, when he is like other people, if he has 
nothing to do, the same result happens as would happen 
with any of ourselves relegated to such unwholesome idle- 
ness; he either falls into hopeless despair or he gets into 
mischief. Imagine a working mechanic attacked for the 
first time just as he is starting in life, or perhaps later still, 
when two or three children look up and call him father. 
Perhaps he is a carpenter; a good workman, but with 
nothing to live on except his weekly-wage. Once he has a 
fit during working-hours, no employer will keep him. To 
have a man fall down with a scream and struggling in 
violent convulsions, scares away custom. So he must go. 
He gets employment in some poorer shop, where nobody 
troubles over references. The same thing happens again. 
He is becoming poorer and poorer. At last an occasional 
job, with weeks of idleness intervening, is all that comes 
his way. One stamp of man feels the misery and degra- 
dation acutely, and broods over his poverty and dependence ; 
others, idle compulsorily, learn to consort with those who are 
idle voluntarily, and often become criminals. In other 
cases, again, the disease so shatters the nervous system that, 
helped on by bad food and bad habits, insanity is added to 
the other trouble, and the asylum receives a life-inmate. 
