83 



The distinction made between organic and inorganic epilepsy has 

 not the importance that some writers seem to admit. There 

 are alterations in the nervous system in both cases, and the only 

 difference is that these alterations can be easily seen with the 

 naked eye in one case and not in the other. I ought to point 

 out that the cases of epilepsy in animals, which I have cured, 

 were cases of organic epilepsy. These animals have been cured, 

 although the apparent and primitive cause of the disease, i. e. a 

 section of a lateral half of the spinal cord, continued to exist. 



The cauterisation of the larynx on these animals was made 

 every day, or every other day, and sometimes during two or three 

 months. In some cases, the relief having been immediate, the 

 cauterisation was made only twice a week. One of the 

 animals experimented on was cured after three or four cau- 

 terisations ; but the number of cauterisations necessary has been 

 generally very much greater. When I left France in February, 

 1852, I had cured about a third of the animals treated by this 

 method ; and all the others, except two or three, had been very 

 much relieved, and certainly many of them would have been cured 

 if the treatment had been prolonged. 



I knew that an animal was cured, not only by the absence of 

 spontaneous fits, but when I could not produce a fit by giving 

 great pain. I had found that on any epileptic animal, except im- 

 mediately after a paroxysm, I could very easily produce a fit by ex- 

 citing pain and more particularly by pinching or burning the skin 

 of the face or neck. So that I am authorised to believe that when 

 a fit was not produced by pinching or burning the face, it was 

 because epilepsy had ceased to exist. 



Some physicians in this country have already tried on man 

 the mode of treatment that I have found so successful on animals. 

 From what I know of the results of their attempt, it seems to 

 me that man is like animals in this respect. There has not been 

 yet a complete curation : but, except in one case, there has been 

 a very considerable diminution in the frequency and the intensity 

 of the fits. 



As physicians who have to treat epileptics, have not to 

 make experiments, but to cure by making use of all the best 

 means together, I think that the treatment of epilepsy ought 



