NERVOUS DISEASES. — 397 
repeating it every hour till the symptoms have abated. When 
convalescent carry out the directions for prevention. Take 
a course of the blood purifying medicine. Keep the skin, 
bowels, and kidneys free with suitable remedies. 
| SUN STROKE 
Is very similar in its manifestations to apoplexy. Treat it in 
the same way: cold water to the front and top of the head, 
hot to the back and neck; the hot foot-bath, &c. 
_ EPILEPSY, 
Called falling sickness, now commonly known as fits, 18 a 
sudden deprivation of the senses, with more or less convulsions. 
The trouble is most common to young people, who may be 
otherwise in good health, The fit may have premonitory 
symptoms, or come on at once, and after continuing from a 
few minutes to an hour, will pass away, leaving the patient 
usually as it found him. The causes of these dangerous 
visitations are, injuries to the head, water on the brain, 
deformity in the skull, tumours, affection of the spine, violent 
affections of the nervous system, sudden fright, fits of passion, 
emotion of the mind, worms in children, hereditary pre- 
disposition, and retention of menses, &c. Often it is 
impossible to assign any cause. The symptoms are well 
known, especially after one or two have taken place. It is likely, 
however, to be mistaken for apoplexy by the inexperienced. 
There are two or three points of difference which will 
distinguish them. In apoplexy the pupils are dilated, in epilepsy 
contracted. In the former convulsions are not frequent; 
in epilepsy they are present, the teeth firmly set, and the 
tongue often badly bitten. ‘These and the oft-recurrence of 
epilepsy will show the difference between the two forms of fits. 
TREATMENT.—When the patient feels the symptoms of 
a coming attack, which are various—headache, giddiness, 
specks floating in the sight, tremour, cold numbness of the 
lmbs—let full doses of the antispasmodic tincture be given 
every hour. Ifthe stomach is loaded, let an emetic be given, 
and an injection, unless the bowels are free. This will often 
