48 Veterinary Medicine. 



the absence of the special susceptibility which attends on the 

 more highly specialized brain, the disturbing conditions of civ- 

 ilization, and the attendant vices. 



Among domestic animals, dogs are the most frequent victims 

 in keeping with their relatively large cerebral development, their 

 emotional and impressionable nature and the unnatural and arti- 

 ficial conditions in which as house pets they are often kept. 

 Their animal food and the consequent uric acid diathesis is a 

 probable cause, as it is in man. In ten years of the dog clinic at 

 Alfort they made an average of 3 per cent, of all cases. Next to 

 the dog the pig kept in confinement is the most frequent victim, 

 while cattle and horses come last. At the Alfort clinic epileptic 

 horses were not more than i per 1000 patients. It is not at all 

 unfrequent in birds, especially canaries and parrots. Reynal 

 has seen it in sparrows. 



Divisions. The disease has long been divided mio petit mal 

 and grand mal (haut mal). The petit mal (slight attack) is 

 usually a transient seizure affecting a group of muscles only and 

 associated with only a momentary or very transient loss of con- 

 sciousness. The loss of consciousness is uncertain as to many 

 cases. Under partial epilepsies must be included the hemi- 

 epilepsy, or Jacksonian epilepsy, which is confined to one side of 

 the body. 



The grand mal (severe attack) is one in which the loss of 

 consciousness is complete, and the convulsions are general in the 

 muscles of animal life. 



Another division is into symptomatic and idiopathic cases, 

 and if this distinction could always be made it would be of im- 

 mense value in the matters of prognosis and treatment as the re- 

 moval of the morbid state of which epileps}' is the symptom will 

 usually restore the patient to health. Thus the removal of 

 worms from the alimentary canal, of indigestible matters from 

 the stomach, of a depressed bone or tumor from the surface of 

 the brain may in different cases be the essential condition of a 

 successful treatment. 



Morbid Anatomy and Pathology. The literature of epilepsy is 

 very rich and extensive and yet no constant lesions of the ner- 

 vous system can be fixed on as the local cause of the disease. A 

 review of the whole literature leads rather to the conclusion that 



