REGIMEN.——Epileptic patients ought, if possible, to breathe a pure and free air. Their diet should be light but nourishing. They ought to drink nothing strong, to avoid swine’s flesh, water-fowl, and likewise all windy and oily vegetables, as cabbage, nuts, &c. They ought to keep themselves cheerful, carefully guarding against all violent passions, as anger, fear, excessive joy, and the like. Exercise is likewise of great use; but the patient must be careful to avoid all extremes either of heat or cold, all dangerous situations, as standing upon precipices, riding, deep waters, and such like. MEDICINE.——The intentions of cure must vary according to the cause of the disease. If the patient be of a sanguine temperament, and there be reason to fear an obstruction in the brain, bleeding and other evacuations will be necessary. When the disease is occasioned by the stoppage of customary evacuations, these, if possible, must be restored; if this cannot be done, others may be substituted in their place. Issues or setons in this case have often a very good effect. When there is reason to believe that the disease proceeds from worms, proper medicines must be used to kill, or carry off these vermin. When the disease proceeds from teething, the body should be kept open by emollient clysters, the feet frequently bathed in warm water, and, if the fits prove obstinate, a blistering-plaster may be put betwixt the shoulders. The same method is to be followed, when epileptic fits precede the eruption of the small-pox, or measles, &c. When the disease is hereditary, or proceeds from a wrong formation of the brain, a cure is not to be expected. When it is owing to a debility, or too great an irritability of the nervous system, such medicines as tend to brace and strengthen the nerves may be used, as the Peruvian bark, and steel; or the _anti-epileptic_ electuaries, recommended by Fuller and Mead[148]. The flowers of zinc have of late been highly extolled for the cure of the epilepsy. Though this medicine will not be found to answer the expectations which have been raised concerning it, yet in obstinate epileptic cases it deserves a trial. The dose is from one to three or four grains, which may be taken either in pills or a bolus, as the patient inclines. The best method is to begin with a single grain four or five times a day, and gradually to increase the dose as far as the patient can bear it. I have known this medicine, when duly persisted in, prove beneficial. Musk has sometimes been found to succeed in the epilepsy. Ten or twelve grains of it, with the same quantity of factitious cinnabar, may be made up into a bolus, and taken every night and morning. Sometimes the epilepsy has been cured by electricity. Convulsion-fits proceed from the same causes, and must be treated in the same manner as the epilepsy.