2. Although some persons, suffering from epileptic seizures, are, in the intervals, of sound mind and body, in many the inter-paroxysmal state is characterized by certain symptoms peculiar to this condition, and independent of any form of treatment. These vary from the slightest departures from health to the most serious mental and physical disease. The general health is frequently unsatisfactory; the functions of the body being impaired in vigour, the digestion is weak, and the circulation feeble. The entire nervous system is in an unstable condition, the patient being at one time irritable and excitable, and at another depressed and despondent. There is a very common condition of so-called "nervousness" which is accompanied by headache, pains, tremors, and a variety of other subjective phenomena. The mental powers are enfeebled, the memory defective, and these intellectual alterations may exist in any degree, even to permanent and intractable forms of insanity. The physical conditions may also be changed, the nutrition of the tissues is often imperfect, the skin is pale, the muscles flabby, and the motor powers generally enfeebled, all of which may also present different degrees of severity, so as to culminate in actual paralysis. Admitting, then, that the prolonged and excessive administration of the bromides causes a series of abnormal symptoms in the healthy individual, affecting mainly the general nutrition, the mental faculties, and the sensory and motor functions, and also that the epileptic state is itself frequently accompanied by impairment of innervation of a somewhat analogous nature, it follows that when the drug is given for the relief of the disease, care must be taken not to confound the two series of phenomena with one another. With this precaution in view, granting that the therapeutic agent beneficially controls and suppresses the convulsive seizures, we proceed to discuss whether in so doing it in any way injuriously influences the constitution of the patient. To answer this question has been found by no means easy. Comparatively few physicians have opportunities of observing cases of epilepsy in sufficient numbers to form substantial conclusions on the subject. Even in favoured circumstances it is difficult, especially in hospital practice, to ensure the regular attendance of the patient or to keep him sufficiently long under observation. The study and the recording of the facts, moreover, demand an expenditure of much time and labour. These, added to the sources of fallacy already enumerated, render the inquiry a complicated one; but it is believed that an approximation to the truth may be arrived at by the following method of investigation.