after that time, so far as its development is excited by the here- 

 ditary tendency alone. Such individuals often suffer from 

 eclampsia as early as during the first dentition, but afterwards 

 again remain apparently healthy up to the outbreak of the 

 epilepsy. 1 Although the father or mother of the patient 

 may never have had an attack, either of the grandparents, 

 or uncles or aunts may have been subject to it. Zacutus 

 Lusitanus mentions the case of an epileptic man who had 

 eight children and three grandchildren afflicted by the 

 disease. Stahl and Reininger adduce instances of the whole 

 of the members of a family being attacked by it at the period 

 of puberty. Boerhaave remarks that, like several other 

 hereditary maladies, it often passes over alternate generations, 

 and he adduces an instance in which all the children of an 

 epileptic father died of it. Dr. Copland says : " I had, in 

 1820, a brother and sister some time under my care, who 

 inherited the disease from their father, and they had two 

 other brothers and one sister also subject to it in all five. 

 The fits appeared in all of them about the period of puberty, 

 and one of the brothers died about the age of forty from 

 apoplexy, complicated with the seizure. MM. Boucher and 

 Casauvieilh state, than in no patients, respecting whom they 

 had made inquiry, 31 were hereditary cases ; and M. Esquirol 

 found, that in 321 cases of epileptic insanity, 105 were 

 descended from either epileptic or insane parents." 



Amongst those cases in which the disease is produced by 

 factors of a kind not appreciable anatomically, which at times 

 affect the nervous system alone, at others the whole organism, 

 inherited predisposition or tendency occupies the first place, 

 and is of prime importance. Seeing that all observers are 

 agreed upon this fact, I need not further cite either statistics 

 1 Nothnagel. 



