A Statistical Inquiry Into the Nature and Treatment of EpilepsyBennett, Alexander Hughes
Science
A Statistical Inquiry Into the Nature and Treatment of Epilepsy
Bennett, Alexander Hughes
Epilepsy
CASE 4.--Lucy D----, aged twenty-two, has suffered from epilepsy major
for eight years. Formerly had about one attack a week. Has always been a
delicate girl, but her general health and mental condition have been
normal. For the last six years she has regularly taken one drachm and a
half of the bromides daily (potassium and ammonium in equal parts). She
has had only three attacks during the past year. Her general health is
excellent. She is robust and active, and takes her full share in
domestic work. She is well educated, intelligent, with good memory and
spirits, and has no tendency to depression or somnolence. The
sensibility, reflex acts, and other functions are as in the other cases.
In these four cases it has been ascertained that the patients were
constantly under the influence of large doses of the bromides for a
period of not less than six years, and practically without intermission.
During this period not only were the frequency and severity of the
convulsive attacks beneficially modified, but there was no evidence to
show that the physical or mental condition had been in any way impaired.
It is further to be observed that these as well as many others of those
constituting the later tables, are examples of unusually long-standing
and severe forms of epilepsy, as evidenced by the fact of their chronic
and intractable nature even under treatment. Notwithstanding the
incompleteness of their recovery, these individuals have voluntarily,
and often at great inconvenience and expense, persevered in the use of
the remedy, which is a fair indication they derived some substantial
benefit from it. The examples before us, one and all, declared they have
found by experience that when they have attempted, even for brief
periods, to discontinue the medicine their symptoms have all become
aggravated. As a result the attacks increase in severity and number, the
headaches return, the nervousness augments, and they are unable to
perform either mental or bodily exertion. These sufferings, it is
maintained, are greatly modified by the bromides, as under their
influence epileptics may perform their daily work, when without them
they are comparatively useless. It would be easy to multiply individual
cases supporting the same general principles. One more instance only
need be particularized--namely, that of a man aged thirty, who has
suffered from epilepsy from infancy, and who for the last five years
has taken _four and a half drachms_ of the bromides daily--_i.e._,
during that time he has consumed upwards of _eighty pounds_ of the drug.
Although a delicate person and intellectually weak, his friends state
that during those years he has been more healthy and robust in mind and
body than at any other period of his life. And these statements were
confirmed by other testimony.
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