Mettauer on the Cmsta Genu Equina in Epilepsy. 201 
of the disease; we might mention also, a want of confidence 
in remedies, among medical men, as an obstacle in the way 
of satisfactory trials. In every successful case our remedy 
should be continued sometime after the convulsions have 
ceased to return ; the patient cannot be considered cured until 
the genera] health too is restored, even if the convulsions 
have long subsided. 
It is not pretended that the crust will prove remediate in 
every case of epilepsy, nor even in all such examples as are 
idiopathic ; some of these may be so strongly engrafted upon 
the system, from long continuance of the disease, as to have 
become completely constitutional and fixed, and necessarily 
irremediable. In the case connected with organic lesions of 
the skull or brain, (could they possibly be distinguished,) we 
should never advise the crust; but as it must be confessed 
that such cases cannot be discriminated, it will be safest in 
every instance to give the remedy a fair trial, (more espe- 
cially as it is not likely to aggravate the incurable cases,) and 
such has uniformly been our custom. 
In obstinate cases the crust should be continued for more 
than a year before it is to be discarded, or the case abandoned 
as incurable ; both forms should always be employed and 
used alternately. 
The crust in form of tincture is also a valuable nervine 
and anti-spasmodic in hysteric convulsions, and indeed in 
hysteria generally. In that variety, connected with or pro- 
ceeding from uterine irregularities incident to sterile mar- 
ried, (or unmarried,) females, it will be particularly service- 
able; with such the paroxysms most strikingly resemble epi- 
lepsy. — Jour, of Medical Sciences. 
Vol. I. — No. 3. 
26 
