768 Epilepsy. 



fection can be transmitted by the father or mother annual to 

 the offspring. 



Of observations in this connection the following may be mentioned: Eeynal 

 noticed the hereditary transmission of epilepsy in three succeeding litters of an 

 aflPected cat. La Notte saw the disease in two herds in the descendants of two 

 affected bulls, and Cruzel in tly-ee calves from an epileptic cow. In a case observe<l 

 by Otto a bitch transmitted the complaint to two of her progeny. 



The epileptoid attacks known under the name of secondary 

 or reflex epilepsy differ from true epilepsy in that they are the 

 result of disease of the brain or of other organic diseases or 

 patliological conditions, after the removal of which they disap- 

 pear, leading neither to a disposition to further attacks in the 

 sick animal nor being transmitted by heredity to the progeny. 



Epilepsy-like attacks arise in such diseases of the meninges 

 or of the bones of the skull as are capable of causing, for a time, 

 an acute excitation in the corresponding parts of the brain. This 

 excitation may be confined to the immediate neighljorhood of the 

 active cause, such as an exostosis or splinter of bone, and the 

 attacks of convulsions are therefore limited to certain parts of 

 the body (Jackson's Epilepsy). Such epileptoid attacks will 

 generally be due to traumatic causes which produce a partial 

 depression of the roof of the skull, to the pressure of a splin- 

 ter of bone into the cortex of the brain or to the occurrence 

 of hemorrhage between the meninges of the brain and the 

 brain itself. In guinea pigs epileptoid attacks have been pro- 

 duced artificially by traumatic influences (blows on the skull) 

 (Westphal). Further causes are solitary tubercle seen particu- 

 larly in the brains of swine and cattle, parasites (especially 

 Cysticerci) in the brain, and in the pia mater of swine, per- 

 haps also in dogs, much more rarely neoplasms, abscesses, ex- 

 ostoses on the internal surface of the cranial bones, ossifying 

 inflammation of the dura cerebralis, etc., old encephalitic foci 

 lead, especially in dogs, to epileptoid attacks (Dexler). In all 

 these cases the first attack is usually induced by the same im- 

 mediate causes as in genuine epilepsy. 



Reflex epilepsy is mostly associated with certain diseases 

 of the mucous membranes. Thus epileptoid spasms in dogs very 

 often result from the presence of intestinal womis (Taeniae, espe- 

 cially T. echinococcus ; ascarides) or even on simple constipa- 

 tion. Similar attacks may be caused in swine by the Echinor- 

 rhynchus gigas, in cows by the Taenia denticulata, and in horses 

 by the Ascaris megalocephala. 



The attacks in this kind of reflex epilepsy are usually not the result of a reflex 

 effect produced by pain, but either by irritability of the vaso-motor nerves in the 

 cranial cavity, or much more by the assimilation of metabolic products of the para- 

 sites or by the putrefaction caused in consequence of the disease of the bowel. 



Epileptoid attacks have also been at times observed in se- 

 vere disease of the external auditory canal as well as in the 



