ECLAMPSIA INFAKTUM. 



405 



fact that there are a great number of medicines which, for a while, 

 seem to do good, but which afterward fail as though the system had 

 become used to them. 



The indications from the disease itself require that the patients 

 should be protected from the injuries which they are apt to inflict 

 upon themselves during the fits. Whenever circumstances permit, an 

 epileptic should not be permitted to go unwatched. This is the best 

 and surest preventive. It is a good plan to let the patient sleep in a 

 bed made with high sides, like a child's crib, but such measures do 

 not dispense with the necessity of further watching, since, if the pa 

 tient were to happen to He upon his face in such a bed, he might read 

 ily be smothered. The patient must not be bound nor held fast dur- 

 ing the fit, nor should his thumbs be forcibly unclinched. Many people 

 believe that the attack will soon subside if this be done. After the 

 fit is over, those patients generally feel best who have been allowed to 

 struggle through it unmolested. The next symptomatic indication is 

 to take the measures already recommended for the purpose of averting 

 a coming paroxysm and of cutting it short. On the whole, compres- 

 sion of a limb, from which the aura seems to proceed, is not advisable, 

 even although we may avert the fit by so doing, since, in the first 

 place, the patient feels worse after thus repressing an attack than if 

 he had had one ; and, in the second, because his next seizure is apt to 

 be of unusual violence. This is also true as regards the use of strong 

 emetics at the commencement of the aura. Sometimes it is possible 

 to arrest the fit by compression of the carotids. Such a practice, how- 

 ever, is very difficult to carry out during the attack, and might do 

 harm if awkwardly performed ; hence we would hardly recommend it. 1 



CHAPTER IV. 



ECLAMPSIA INFANTTTM. 



THE eclampsia of parturient and of puerperal women is very often 

 dependent upon a morbid condition of the gravid uterus, upon the re- 

 tention of portions of placenta after delivery, or upon other and un- 

 known disorders of pregnancy or of child-bed. We therefore refer the 

 subjects of puerperal and parturient eclampsia to the text-books of 

 obstetrics, just as we have already referred those of other puerperal 

 conditions of the womb, ovaries, and vagina. 



ETIOLOGY. We have called eclampsia an acute epilepsy. Here, 

 too, there are convulsions with loss of consciousness ; but, unlike epi- 

 lepsy, the recurrence of the fit, instead of continuing for years, lasts 



