420 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



dinary and constant energy, in the distribution of the nervous 

 power, so it must be sufficiently probable that an over-disten - 

 tion of these blood-vessels may be a cause of violent excite- 

 ment. 



" It will be found that this distention produces epilepsy, not 

 in operating by compression, but by a peculiar irritation and 

 increase of excitement. It must therefore be considered in a 

 different light from what is more properly called compression 

 by blood or serum, which we find attending cases of epilepsy. 

 It is difficult to say if this does operate, and how it operates ; but 

 when epilepsy precedes palsy, we do not necessarily infer a com- 

 pression, but merely a congestion, some degree of hasmorrhagic 

 impetus, which may produce epilepsy by irritation ; and only 

 in consequence of this same congestion being frequently re- 

 peated, it at length produces the effusion which acts directly 

 by compression, and induces palsy. Nay, I can suppose an- 

 other case in which epilepsy may produce palsy without the 

 existence of compression : I have said that epilepsy sometimes 

 arises from collapse, and at last that permanent degree of col- 

 lapse may take place on which palsy depends. Although, there- 

 fore, the combination of the two diseases, epilepsy and palsy, 

 leads to suspect a compression, yet, when the epilepsy is suc- 

 ceeded by palsy, no conclusion follows that it originally depend- 

 ed upon compression ; when, on the other hand, epilepsy super- 

 venes upon palsy, the conclusion that it depends upon com- 

 pression, is much more probable, although we should not be able 

 to explain the fact. I have a clear proof of it in this, that I find 

 epilepsy succeeding upon hydropic palsy or apoplexy. Although 

 I have no doubt, therefore, that compression is necessarily 

 taken in in the enumeration of causes of epilepsy, I have difficulty 

 in saying how it operates : the most probable account is, that 

 the compression acts as other partial compressions do, by giving 

 an obstruction, which will readily occasion that turgescence in the 

 other parts of the brain that so readily produces epilepsy." 



MCCXCVII. We have now enumerated the several remote 

 or occasional causes of epilepsy, acting by excitement, and 

 acting immediately upon the brain itself. Of the causes act- 

 ing by excitement, but acting upon other parts of the body, and 

 from thence communicated to the brain, they are all of them 



