EPILEPSY. 133 



most liable to uncontrollable impulses, homicidal and 

 suicidal, and to maniacal outbursts. Later, delusions 

 more or less permanent are often developed, which 

 are the cause of not a few of the motiveless murders 

 constantly occurring. In fact, the majority of epileptics 

 are really insane between the attacks. Esquirol * 

 examined 385 epileptic women, with a view to dis- 

 covering to what extent mental disease existed among 

 them, and he discovered that only a sixth were free 

 from intellectual derangement : " but nearly all these," 

 he said, " were irritable, peculiar, and easily enraged." 

 From this it is clear that no person who has ever had 

 " fits " is to be depended u^pon, and to entrust young 

 children or others to their care, as is often done by 

 mothers and others in authority out of misplaced pity, 

 is little short of criminal. 



It is most unfortunate, then, that this dread disease, 

 which degrades its victims to a level beneath that of 

 the beasts that perish, is not properly understanded 

 of the people. Not only the ignorant, but a great 

 number of those who can lay claim to some education, 

 know so little of hereditary disease that they look 

 upon epilepsy occurring in children merely as an un- 

 avoidable affliction depending entirely upon teething, 

 worms, or some such infantile trouble, which for some 

 unknown reason is often continued into adult life. 

 In the same way, when it makes its appearance later 

 in life, it is set down as the result of a fright, the 

 " change of life " (puberty), or some such cause. Not 



* " Maladies Mentales," vol. i. 



