"Epilepsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hospital on account of imperfect development of speech, mental defect, imbecility or idiocy. When he found families in which such defective children occurred, he then inquired as to their ancestry. Many of these children, he found, were reduced to a condition approaching epilepsy, or actually epileptic, because they themselves were alcoholic. Obviously such material can not legitimately be used to prove that the use of alcohol by parents injures the heredity of their children. The figures do not at all give the proof we are seeking, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... bitter and aromatic, abounding in a principle like camphor. —261 (10): HEYRIFF harif Galium Aparine, and allied species. They were formerly considered good for scorbutic diseases, when applied externally. Lately, in France, they have been administered internally against epilepsy. —263 (12): BRESEWORT; if brisewort or bruisewort, it would be Sambucus Ebulus, but this seems most unlikely. —265 [unlabeled, 1 on next page] BROKELEMPK brooklime. Veronica Beccabunga, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... began to have his visions of angels, especially of Gabriel. He saw a light, and heard a voice, and had sentences like the above put into his mind. These communications were accompanied by strong convulsions (epilepsy, says Weil), in which he would fall to the ground and foam at the mouth. Sprenger considers it to have been a form of hysteria, with a mental origin, perhaps accompanied with catalepsy. The prophet himself said: "Inspiration descends on me ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... quotes a number of Jewish medical writings of the eighteenth century, republished as late as the end of the nineteenth, which show the persistence of these magical formulae amongst the Jews. Most of these are too loathsome to transcribe; but some of the more innocuous are as follows: "For epilepsy kill a cock and let it putrefy." "In order to protect yourself from all evils, gird yourself with the rope with which a criminal has been hung." Blood of different kinds also plays an important part: "Fox's blood and wolf's blood are good for stone in the bladder, ram's blood ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... to which Herodotus says Cambyses had been subject from his birth, and which was called "sacred" by some, can scarcely be other than epilepsy. See Herod, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... center of the cranium and in the back part of the head; pains in the back and loins; cold feet and hands, becoming sometimes very hot; skin harsh and dry; slow pulse, and not infrequently attended with epilepsy. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... given in pills, as the system bears a dose three times as large as when given in solution. The usual dose is from one-quarter of a grain to one grain three times a day when administered as a medicine. In cases of epilepsy Dr. Powell recommends one grain at first, to be gradually increased to six. Clocquet[2] has given as much as fifteen grains in a day, and Ricord has given sixteen grains of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... not form from the milk, some witch was in the churn. If the cattle died of an epidemic, or a disease unknown to the poor science of the day, it was the result of witchcraft. If a child or grown person was afflicted with some strange disease, such as epilepsy, the "jerks," "St. Vitus' dance," "rickets" or other strange nervous complaints, which they could not understand, they at once attributed it ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... be unfamiliar to many readers, and some will doubtless think that madness, hysteria, or epilepsy may account for them. To such I would suggest the following points for consideration: Firstly, the striking, detailed resemblance between the cases seen now in heathen lands and those recorded in the Scriptures; secondly, the complete and lasting restoration resulting ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... to cure than the Epilepsy or Falling- Sickness; yet several Instances have occurred where the most violent Degrees of it, have been cured, even in grown Persons, by taking a Dose of this Medicine regularly every Night and Morning for a considerable Time. The Dose ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to have been more interesting to men and even to ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I suppose you must have heard the noise of our little combat. No one was injured; but your father, after a burst of rage at finding himself in our hands, during which we found it most difficult to control him, has had what appears to be an epileptic seizure. Is he subject to epilepsy?" ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... would appear that the rupture is brought about not so much by the contraction of the muscle concerned, as by the contraction of the antagonistic muscles taking place before that of the muscle which undergoes rupture is completed. The violent muscular contractions of epilepsy, tetanus, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... number of cases of idiocy, madness, and epilepsy caused by the unskillful provoking of hypnotic sleep. One case is sufficiently interesting, for it is almost exactly similar to a case that occurred at one of the American colleges. The subject was a young professor ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... Punch!' 'Who is it then?' (this in a squeak trembling with emotion and terror); and then the full, loud reply, booming like a judgement-bell, 'It is the Devil come to take you down to Hell,' and the form of Punch, with kicking legs, sunken in epilepsy on the floor,—all this was solemn and exquisite to me beyond words. I was not amused—I was deeply moved and exhilarated, 'purged', as the old phrase hath it, 'with pity ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Which is spit out)—Ver. 566. Some would render the words "qui sputatur," "which is spit upon," and fancy that they find authorities in the ancient writers for thinking that epilepsy was treated by spitting upon the patient. However, it seems much more probable, that the notion was that epilepsy was cured by the patient himself spitting out the noxious saliva; and that the word "sputatur" means, "is spit ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... infinite. They further show that for a long time before the London visions he was in a disturbed state of health, his nervous system unstrung, his whole being so unhinged that at times he suffered from attacks of what was probably hystero-epilepsy. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... "unsound,"—not in theology nor in morals, but in body,—subject to epileptic fits, in fact. According to the custom of that place, the boy was examined by the city physician, who required Captain Vesey to take him back; and Denmark served him faithfully, with no trouble from epilepsy, for twenty years, travelling all over the world with him, and learning to speak various languages. In 1800, he drew a prize of fifteen hundred dollars in the East Bay Street Lottery, with which he bought his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... view, have been afraid of producing a poisonous effect with their drugs. With him, on the contrary, the whole art of medicine lies in judicious poisoning, and when the case is serious, his remedies are heroic. Where, in epilepsy, I should have given thirty-grain doses of bromide or chloral every four hours, he would give two drachms every three. No doubt it will seem to you very kill-or-cure, and I am myself afraid that a succession of coroners' inquests may check Cullingworth's career; ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeutic properties which are in all Aryan folk-lore ascribed to the various lightning-plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made of mistletoe-twigs, and the plant is supposed to be a specific against epilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed through holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash rods are used in some parts of England for the cure of diseased sheep, cows, and horses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... I ran out of my tent to see what was the matter; and being guided by a noise to the servants' quarters, I found the kitchen assistant in convulsions, and the rest holding him down. It was a Syrian disease, a sort of epilepsy. They all wanted to tread on his back, but I would not let them do it. I got some hot brandy and restoratives, and gave him a good dosing between his clenched teeth. The result was he came to in an hour and a half, sensible, but very tipsy; ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... as with us, periods of nervous unrest and unhappiness are apt to recur in a sort of cycle. This cyclical character of mental disturbance is often a marked feature. We see it in epilepsy and in what the French have called Folie Circulaire. We see it in the dipsomaniac, in the intermittency of his craving for drink and of his periodical outbursts, and we see it in ourselves in those periods of depression ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... removed from the diet. Unless there is kidney defect, probably it need not be omitted, and a long salt-free diet is certainly not advisable. This salt-free diet has been recommended not only in nephritis and heart disease, but also in diabetes insipidus and in epilepsy. It is of value if there is edema in nephritis; it is of doubtful value in heart disease; it is rarely of value in diabetes insipidus; and in epilepsy its value consists probably in allowing the bromid that may be administered to have better activity ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... structures, muscles and ligaments; weakening and loss of reason, will, and self-control resulting in negative, sensitive and subjective conditions which open the way to nervous prostration, control by other personalities (hypnotic influence, obsession, possession); the different forms of insanity, epilepsy, petit mal, etc. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... opium, ether, mercury, and other articles of the materia medica. He calls tobacco a "fashionable poison," in the various forms in which that narcotic is employed.—He says, "The great increase of dyspepsia; the late alarming frequency of apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, and other diseases of the nervous system; is attributable, in part, to the ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... interludes from toil Which leave us still the labour-despot's spoil, Slaves of long hours and unrelaxing strain, Unstrengthened and unsolaced, soon again To tread the round, and lift the lengthening chain; Stand—till hysteria lays its hideous clutch On our girl-hearts, or epilepsy's touch Thrills through tired nerves and palsied brain. Again—again—again! How long? Till Death, upon its kindly quest, Gives a true ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... Gelon's only child, and the darling and god-daughter of Empeiristes. By the application of galvanic influence Empeiristes had removed a nervous affection of her right leg, accompanied with symptomatic epilepsy. The tear started in Gelon's eye, and he pressed the hand of his friend, while Musaello, half suppressing, half indulging, a similar sense of shame, sportively exclaimed, "Hang it, Gelon! somehow or other these philosopher ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... treatment of the woman of Canaan requires some apology, and therefore says that she was a Greek of Syrophenician race, which probably excused any incivility to her in Mark's eyes. He represents the father of the boy whom Jesus cured of epilepsy after the transfiguration as a sceptic who says "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief." He tells the story of the widow's mite, omitted by Matthew. He explains that Barabbas was "lying bound with them that made insurrection, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... vertigo, paralysis of limbs, vomiting, sciatica, or incontinence or suppression of urine, spitting of blood; others, again, simulate hysteria, epilepsy, or insanity. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... best to do, and reduced to the verge of despair, his wife, who had long been suffering from low spirits and despondency, and his three children, were taken ill; one of the sons died of small-pox, and the wife eleven days after of low fever and epilepsy. No money could be got at Prague, so after a short time he accepted a professorship at Linz, and withdrew with his two quite young ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... your pleasant old gentle-man with the umbrella sounds very much like masked epilepsy. Ought to be under treatment. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... unable to extract it. Meanwhile the little patient was suffering from an earache that extended over almost the entire head, and that increased at night and especially in cold and damp weather. To these symptoms were added strokes of epilepsy and an atrophy of the left arm. Finally, in November, 1595, De Hilden, being called in, acquainted himself with the cause of the trouble, and decided to remove the foreign body. To do this, he selected, as he tells us, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... "'2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by the section of the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... than we yet possess of the old superstitious beliefs and practices of our forefathers. And certainly some strange superstitions do remain, or at least lately did remain, among us. The sacrifice, for example, of the cock and other animals for recovery from epilepsy and convulsions, is by no means extinct in some Highland districts. In old Pagan and Mithraic times we know that the sacrifice of the ox was common. I have myself often listened to the account given by one near and dear to me, who was ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... (the 15th, I believe) I had a strong and sudden convulsive attack, which left me speechless, though not motionless-for some strong men could not hold me; but whether it was epilepsy, catalepsy, cachexy, or apoplexy, or what other exy or epsy the doctors have not decided; or whether it was spasmodic or nervous, etc.; but it was very unpleasant, and nearly carried me off, and all that. On Monday, they put leeches to my temples, no difficult matter, but ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... distinctly the medical question as to Poe. He calls him "the mad man of letters par excellence," and by an ingenious investigation seems to establish it as probable that Poe was the victim of a form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attempts to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or less given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." And here he goes beyond the necessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... forces, and that the spending of forces during the fit re-establishes the equilibrium. But at the same time, after this spending, one observes a notable lowering of the mental level, a real psycholepsy. It is very likely that studies of this kind will produce some day the key of the epilepsy problem, for vertigos and certain epileptic fits are certainly phenomena of relaxation, the meaning of which we do not comprehend because we do not study sufficiently the state of psychological tension ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... general effect of drinking fermented or spirituous liquors is an inflamed, schirrous, or paralytic liver, with its various critical or consequential diseases, as leprous eruptions on the face, gout, dropsy, epilepsy, insanity. It is remarkable, that all the diseases from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to the third generation; gradually increasing, if the cause be continued, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... "the most hellish father, St. Paul, or Paula III" and his "hellish Roman church." "One would like to curse them," he wrote, "so that thunder and lightning would strike them, hell fire burn them, the plague, syphilis, epilepsy, scurvy, leprosy, carbuncles, and all diseases attack them"—and so on for page after page. Of course such lack of restraint largely defeated its own ends. The Swiss Reformer Bullinger called it "amazingly violent," and a book than which he "had ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... centralized power. There is a pretty legend, denoting the docility of the boy and his love of learning, or at least of the national lays; but he was also a hunter and a warrior. From his youth he had a thorn in his flesh, in the shape of a mysterious disease, perhaps epilepsy, to which monkish chroniclers have given an ascetic and miraculous turn; and this enhances our sense of the hero's moral energy in the case of Alfred, as ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... distinct attributes, and were thought to cause epilepsy or madness. They were generally treated more or less as a joke,[17] and are spoken of much as we speak of a bogey. They appear to have been entrusted with the torturing of the dead, as we see from the saying, "Only the Larvae war with the dead."[18] In Seneca's Apocolocyntosis,[19] when the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... all that passed, that I did take cognizance of strange sights and singular people, that I did act much as persons act from the ordinary promptings of curiosity, and from time to time even laugh very much as others do who are attacked with a convulsive sense of the ridiculous, the epilepsy of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Look at those legs. The boy's got the rickets—incipient, but he's got them. If epilepsy doesn't get him in the end, it will be ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... insane, the latter dying by suicide; of a Jew, whose father, mother, and six brothers and sisters were all mad; and in some other cases several members of the same family, during three or four successive generations, have committed suicide. Striking instances {8} have been recorded of epilepsy, consumption, asthma, stone in the bladder, cancer, profuse bleeding from the slightest injuries, of the mother not giving milk, and of bad parturition being inherited. In this latter respect I may mention an odd case given by a good observer,[13] in which the fault lay in the offspring, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... to hazards the most unforeseen and the most dangerous. No one knows in the evening what will happen the next morning, nor in the morning how the day will finish. There is no doctrine, no method whatever, in the direction of public affairs. A Chamber possessed by the electoral epilepsy; charlatans without shame abandoning themselves before the electors to every contortion, to the grossest declamations, to the most shameful manoeuvres, in order to lead public opinion still further astray, instead of enlightening it,—this is the spectacle ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... inherited as such. There is scarcely even a disease in which we now regard heredity as playing a dominant or controlling part. Among the few diseases in which there is serious dispute as to this are tuberculosis, insanity, epilepsy, and cancer. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... which he mentions one, that held above 85 foot in height: I have my self planted of them, and imparted to my friends, which have thriv'd exceedingly; but till now did not insert it among the foresters: The vertues of the fruit of this cherry-tree against the epilepsy, palsy, and convulsions, &c. are in the spirits and distill'd waters. Concerning its other uses, see the chapter and section above-mentioned, to which add pomona, Chap. 8. annexed with this treatise. This tree affords excellent ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the membranes and ligaments which serve for motion; certain chronic diseases, arising from a loss of the sensibility and elasticity of the nerves, or from too great a thickness; tenacity, and acrimony of the humors; epilepsy; fixed weakness arising from apoplexy; certain phthisical complaints, whereby the body is wasted; the cholic, caeliac affection, rupture, and ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... splendour of many shining qualities and grand virtues, that throw a glory over the obscure period in which he lived, and which is for no other reason worthy of our knowledge,'—all proclaim his supremacy. Like many great men,—like Julius Caesar, with his epilepsy—or Sir Walter Scott and Byron, with their lameness—or Schleiermacher, with his deformed appearance,—a physical infirmity beset Alfred most of his life, and at last carried him off at a comparatively early age. This was a disease ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... minerals, and the observations he has made; but his real interest, which he endeavors to conceal by passing to matters of greater import to him, as he would have his sage at home believe, is in what he pronounces "a case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy". His last letter brought his journeyings to Jericho. He is now on his way to Jerusalem, and has reached Bethany, where he passes ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom "the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire"—of which case one of the greatest modern physicians remarks that never was there a truer description of epilepsy—and various other episodes, show this same inevitable mode of thought as a refracting medium through which the teachings and doings of the Great Physician were revealed to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... great phenomenon of these gospels,—the casting out of devils,—pressed forcibly on my attention. I now dared to look full into the facts, and saw that the disorders described were perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania, catalepsy, and other known maladies. Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunchbacked, are spoken of as devil-ridden. I farther knew that such diseases are still ascribed to evil genii in Mussulman countries: even a vicious horse is believed by the Arabs to be majnun, possessed by a Jin ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... of the year at which the tarantular poisoning took place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like fainting or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those affections. All the other symptoms are ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the spectacle unrolling itself below us took on a blessed air of unreality. Any normal person who has seen a dance of the Aissaouas and watched them swallow thorns and hot coals, slash themselves with knives, and roll on the floor in epilepsy must have privately longed, after the first excitement was over, to fly from the repulsive scene. The Hamadchas are much more savage than Aissaouas, and carry much farther their display of cataleptic anaesthesia, and, knowing this, I ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... appear to be particularly liable to blushing, Dr. J. Crichton Browne has several times seen the blush extend as far down as the collar-bones, and in two instances to the breasts. He gives me the case of a married woman, aged twenty-seven, who suffered from epilepsy. On the morning after her arrival in the Asylum, Dr. Browne, together with his assistants, visited her whilst she was in bed. The moment that he approached, she blushed deeply over her cheeks and temples; and the blush spread quickly to her ears. She was much agitated and tremulous. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... epilepsy, without such fatal results as the foregoing, are not uncommon as the effect of a single dose of an opiate given unadvisedly; and by their continued and habitual use (and the form of syrup of poppies is but too often administered by an indiscreet and ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... prime, or extinguishing the light of reason. It is an important factor in the production of blindness, deafness, throat affections, heart-disease and degeneration of the arteries, stomach and bowel disease, kidney-disease, and affections of the bones. Congenital syphilis often leads to epilepsy or to idiocy, and most of the victims who survive are a charge on the State. This indictment against syphilis is by no means complete. The economic loss resulting from this disease is enormous as regards young, old, middle-aged. ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... and averse to all excess. He knew the absurd stories that were circulated about him, and he was sometimes vexed at theme It has been repeated, over and over again, that he was subject to attacks of epilepsy; but during the eleven years that I was almost constantly with him I never observed any symptom which in the least degree denoted that malady. His health was good and his constitution sound. If his enemies, by way of reproach, have attributed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and grace, as ignorance, a proneness towards evil, and a difficulty in well-doing. Some other defects do not flow from the whole of human nature in common on account of the sin of our first parent, but are caused in some men by certain particular causes, as leprosy, epilepsy, and the like; and these defects are sometimes brought about by the fault of the man, e.g. from inordinate eating; sometimes by a defect in the formative power. Now neither of these pertains to Christ, since His flesh was conceived ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... forgotten to say that Nurse Hripsime, though she could neither read nor write, was a skilful physician. She laid the sick person on the grass, administered a sherbet, cured hemorrhoids and epilepsy; and especially with sick women was she successful. Yes, to her skill I myself can bear witness. About four years ago my child was taken ill in the dog-days, and for three years my wife had had a fever, so that she was very feeble. The daughter of Arutin, the gold-worker, and the ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... succeed; you may win your great fight for self-mastery. But your children—the curse would hang over them. One and all, they too might suffer. Though you should hold to your self-mastery, there would still be a chance,—epilepsy, insanity, your own form of the curse! And should you again fall back ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... stranger to him, called Noirtier his father. At this moment the whole soul of the old man seemed centred in his eyes which became bloodshot; the veins of the throat swelled; his cheeks and temples became purple, as though he was struck with epilepsy; nothing was wanting to complete this but the utterance of a cry. And the cry issued from his pores, if we may thus speak—a cry frightful in its silence. D'Avrigny rushed towards the old man and made him ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... horse, and a carbon from an arc light are shown as sovereign charms against rheumatism. Other amulets in the Washington exhibit," he added, "are the patella of a sheep and a ring made out of a coffin nail (dug out of a graveyard) for cramps and epilepsy, a peony root to be carried in the pocket against insanity, and rare and precious stones for all and sundry diseases." It had been Dr. Flint's intention, besides presenting an educational display on the history of the medical ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round, pretty, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... a promising young man to take charge of the boys,—maybe you know him,—Mr. Witherspoon, at the bank. I wish to introduce him to asylum circles by easy steps, so PLEASE don't mention insanity or epilepsy or alcoholism or any of your ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... For all mad folks in general bear hunger, cold, and any other inclemency of the weather; in short, all bodily inconveniencies, with surprizing ease; as they enjoy a strength of constitution superior to what might be easily imagined. Likewise it frequently happens, that an epilepsy comes on madness of a long standing. For these diseases are nearly related; and in this case, we know by experience, that there remain not the least hopes of recovery. Lastly it is to be observed, that the patient is either frantic or melancholic, according ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dreadful blight upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... upon it, and leave round-cornered cards at all the drugstores, so that everybody who buys a cigar will know I am subject to the Democratic primary. I wonder, by the way, if people ever survive that malady? It sounds to me a deal more dangerous that epilepsy, say, yet lots of persons ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Epilepsy. Tumor or break in brain. Cranial neuralgia. Disease of neck bones. Adenoids. Ear disease. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... they do Shakespeare's England; but ours have quite frequently a decided pink tinge. The light and graceful growth, and the pinnately divided foliage, give the plant a special charm. In olden times, when it was counted a valuable remedy in hysteria and epilepsy, Linnaeus gave it its generic name Cardamine from two ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... an epileptic child who is unfit by reason of severe or frequent epilepsy to attend an ordinary school, but is not idiot or imbecile or otherwise a proper person to be sent to an institution under the control ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... tissues and transmitted the malady by penetrating into the sexual elements.[42] This objection has been answered by Brown-Sequard himself;[43] but a more plausible one might be raised. Some experiments of Voisin and Peron have shown that fits of epilepsy are followed by the elimination of a toxic body which, when injected into animals,[44] is capable of producing convulsive symptoms. Perhaps the trophic disorders following the nerve lesions made by Brown-Sequard correspond to the formation of precisely this convulsion-causing poison. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... and moreover they have warm ones according to the Roman custom, and they make use also of olive oil. They have found out, too, a great many secret cures for the preservation of cleanliness and health. And in other ways they labor to cure the epilepsy, with which they ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... a friend I was visiting I went to carry some comforts to a neglected almshouse on a Western prairie. In the insane ward I found a poor young fellow suffering from epilepsy. There had been some brutal treatment in the almshouse and he had tried to escape. Being overtaken he had fought for his liberty, and in consequence he was afterwards fastened with a chain and ball of many pounds' weight. He could not be cared for elsewhere, as his family was very poor, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... for Lumley knew well, that it is most pernicious to public men to be considered failing in health,—turkeys are not more unfeeling to a sick brother than politicians to an ailing statesman; they give out that his head is touched, and see paralysis and epilepsy in every speech and every despatch. The time, too, nearly ripe for his great schemes, made it doubly necessary that he should exert himself, and prevent being shelved with a plausible excuse of tender compassion for his infirmities. As soon therefore as he learned that Legard ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... find noted 'awful suffering in spine, head, and eyes,' requiring the use of chloral and morphia in large doses. 'For many years she has had convulsive attacks of two distinct types, which are obviously of the character of hystero-epilepsy.' The following are the brief notes of the condition in which I found her, which I made in my case-book on the day of my first visit. 'I found the patient lying on an invalid couch, her left arm paralyzed and rigidly contracted, strapped ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... Huntington, Indiana, has reported three cases of epilepsy in children caused by congenital phimosis that were entirely relieved by an operation without any subsequent return of the difficulty. One of the cases was in a boy ten years old, with very firm preputial adhesions and a high grade of inflammation ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses!—vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of music too ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... entails mischiefs in other organs. "Apoplexy and palsy, in a scarcely credible number of cases, are directly dependent on hypertrophic enlargement of the heart." And in other cases, asthma, dropsy, and epilepsy are caused. Now if a result of this inter-dependence as seen in the individual organism, is that a local modification of one part produces, by changing their functions, correlative modifications of other parts, then the question here ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the labyrinth are malformation, noise and concussion, mumps, and syphilis; affecting the nerve, paralysis, convulsions, sunstroke, congestion of brain, and disease of nervous system; and affecting brain center, hydrocephalus and epilepsy. Among unclassified causes are also adduced neuralgia, childbirth, accident, medicine, heat, rheumatism, head-ache, fright or shock, overwork, lightning, diarrhea, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... with an apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. The paroxysms of the gout and stone must undoubtedly make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... himself to the fatal reproduction of these same circumstances, of transcendental importance to the whole estate, nay, to the whole nation? A king of Bavaria singing Wagner's operas among rocks and lakes; a brother of the king of Bavaria resembling Sigismund de Calderon by his epilepsy and insanity; Prince Rudolph showing that the double infirmity inherent in the paternal lineage of Charles the Rash and in the maternal line of Joanna the Mad continues in the Austrians; a recent king of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... distressing and, in some instances, strange and delightful experiences on which this book is based. The event was the illness of an older brother, who, late in June, 1894, was stricken with what was thought to be epilepsy. Few diseases can so disorganize a household and distress its members. My brother had enjoyed perfect health up to the time he was stricken; and, as there had never been a suggestion of epilepsy, or any like disease, in either ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... his wife the brains. Kadijah announces that she is about to devote herself to an enterprise that will rob her of her young husband's love. Mahomet means to conquer the world; this his wife has guessed, and she supports him by persuading the people of Mecca that her husband's attacks of epilepsy are the effect of his intercourse with the angels (chorus of the first followers of Mahomet, who come to promise him their aid, C sharp minor, sotto voce). Mahomet goes off to seek the Angel Gabriel ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... in many ways, but had one great physical failing: he was often seized with fits of a kind that nowadays would be ascribed to the disease called epilepsy. In those days, however, these fits were thought to be the work of devils who entered into and possessed the body. When he was six years old his mother died and he was brought up by his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... experience of cattle-breeders, stock-farmers, horse-dealers, and dog and poultry fanciers. Nay, it is only the other day that an eminent physiologist, Dr. Brown-Sequard, communicated to the Royal Society his discovery that epilepsy, artificially produced in guinea-pigs, by a means which he has discovered, is transmitted to their offspring. [Footnote: Compare Weismann's Essays Upon Heredity, p. 310, et ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... gods. Out of these customs grew the majority of our institutions; out of these queer beliefs and superstitions, out of witchcraft, sympathetic magic, the "Old Man" idea, the primitive reaction to sleep, epilepsy and death grew medicine, science, religion, festivals, the kingship, the idea of soul and most of the other governing and directing ideas of our lives. It is true that the noble beliefs and sciences also grew from these rude seeds, but with them and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... agate set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies; The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels, Boiled i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl (Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy); And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber Headed with diamant and carbuncle. My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, Knots, goodwits, lampreys. I myself will have The beards of barbels served; instead of salads, Oiled mushrooms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... comparing the chemical action of alcohol and absinthe on man, drew the conclusion that the former acts more slowly, gradually provoking delirium and digestive derangement, while absinthe rapidly results in epilepsy. Then, producing a couple of dogs, he treated one with alcohol and the other with essence of absinthe, this latter being the active principle of the absinthe liquor which is commonly drunk. The alcoholized brute could not stand up, became sleepy and stupid, and, when set on his legs, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the previous literature, under the head of pathological liars, cases of epilepsy, insanity, and mental defect have been cited, but that is misleading. A clear terminology should be adopted. The pathological liar forms a species by himself and as such does not necessarily belong ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... effeminate appearance, as a thing that was half man, half woman, and a duel took place in which Hervey was wounded. Hervey was a remarkable man. His physical frame was as feeble as that of Voltaire. He suffered from epilepsy and a variety of other ailments. He had to live mainly on a dietary of ass's milk. His face was so meagre and so pallid, or rather livid, that he used to paint and make up like an actress or a fine lady. Pope, who might have been considerate to the weak of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... young fellow, betrothed to blind Lucilla Finch. To cure the epilepsy attendant upon an injury to his head, he takes nitrate of silver, concealing the discoloration of his complexion caused by the drug from the knowledge of his betrothed, who has a nervous horror of ugliness and deformity. When she regains her sight, he leaves her because he dares not disclose ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... recovering consciousness, slowly realized his sad condition. Then he conceived a fear, the stronger as begotten by conviction, that the sands of his life had run their course. Throughout that day and the next he fainted frequently, and showed symptoms of epilepsy. On Wednesday he was cupped and bled in both jugulars; but on Thursday he was pronounced better, when the physicians, anxious to welcome hope, spoke of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... that upon an inquest of truth. "All the people quake like dew." The demoniacs of Palestine were not more shaken of old by internal possessions, than the heart of England is swayed to and fro under the action of this or similar problems. Epilepsy is not more overmastering than is the tempest of moral strife in England. And a new dawn is arising upon us in the prospect, that henceforth the agitations of peace will be more impassioned for the coming generation than the agitations of war for the last. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... and reduced to powder, is the only efficacious remedy for epilepsy. Toucans are very scarce birds, and if their beaks were no larger than those of other birds of their size, this medicine could never be ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... fainted during the moon eclipses, and only came to himself after its entire emersion. King Charles VI. relapsed six times into madness during the year 1399, either at the new or full moon. Physicians have ranked epilepsy amongst the maladies that follow the phases of the moon. Nervous maladies have often appeared to be influenced by it. Mead speaks of a child who had convulsions when the moon was in opposition. Gall remarked that insane persons underwent an accession ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... hypothesis as their metaphysical foundation. The origin of this hypothesis—namely, that disembodied intelligences exist and are active—is explained by anthropologists as the result of early reasonings on life, death, sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, the phenomena of epilepsy, and the illusions of starvation. This scientific theory is, in itself, unimpeachable; normal phenomena, psychological and physical, might suggest most of the ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Paralysis and Epilepsy is on the same side. This was instituted in 1859, but the present building was in 1885 opened by the Prince of Wales, and is a memorial to the Duke of Albany, and a very splendid memorial it is. The building, which occupies a very large space along the side of the Square, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... may recollect that Darby in his pleasant dialogue with Father M'Cabe, alluded to a man named Bob Beatty, as a person afflicted with epilepsy. It was then reported that the priest had miraculously cured him of that complaint; but, whether he had or not, one thing, at least, was certain, that he became a Roman Catholic, and went regularly to mass. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in the number of crimes due to circumstances (crimes d'occasion), crimes caused principally by the social environment. But there are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimes against decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct, homicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from a psycho-pathological ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... a cure for all earthly ills, it is of value in many which proceed from imperfect nutrition producing exhaustion of the patient. There are some conditions of the lungs in which it cannot be used, as well as in organic diseases of the brain and heart, epilepsy, certain disorders of the liver, and when gallstones are present. It is drunk at the temperature of the air which surrounds the patient, but must be warmed with hot water, not in the sun, and sipped slowly, with pauses, not drunk down in haste; and generally exercise must be taken. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... in Indian shells, Dishes of agat set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies. The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels, Boil'd in the spirit of sol, and dissolv'd pearl, Apicius' diet, 'gainst the epilepsy: And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, Headed with diamond and carbuncle. My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons, Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have The beards of barbels served, instead of sallads; ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... should be no children when either mother or father suffers from such diseases as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, syphilis, cancer, epilepsy, insanity, drunkenness and mental disorders. In the case of the mother, heart disease, kidney trouble and pelvic deformities are also a serious bar ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... the morbus sacer, Or falling sickness, epilepsy, of old In Palestine and Greece so much ascribed To deities or devils. To resume We find it caused by morphological Changes of the cortex cells. Sometimes, More times, indeed, the anatomical Basis, if one be, escapes detection. For many functions of ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... White (1785-1806) published 'Clifton Grove' and other poems in 1803. Two volumes of his 'Remains,' consisting of poems, letters, etc., with a life by Southey, were issued in 1808. His tendency to epilepsy was increased by over-work at Cambridge. He once remarked to a friend that "were he to paint a picture of Fame, crowning a distinguished undergraduate after the Senate house examination, he would represent her as concealing a Death's head ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... thought to have had a determining influence in Mahomet's production of Islam. He had a peculiar temperament; mental excitement led in him to inner catastrophes which, whether they are classed under epilepsy or hysteria, caused him to see visions and to believe that certain words had been addressed to him by heavenly visitants. The new religious movement in Arabia had secured an adherent in whom its teachings would be felt with tremendous intensity, and would possibly break forth ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... at his finger-tips—he had measured its reaction-times and calculated its cephalic index, and analyzed its secretions and tested it for indecan. He knew trance and clairvoyance, auto-suggestion and telepathic hallucination, epilepsy and hysteria and ecstasy; and over the head of any disputatious person he would swing the steam-shovel of his erudition, and bury the unfortunate beneath a wagon-load of Latin ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Bautzen, and Dresden, Byron said that "bar epilepsy and the elements, he would back Napoleon against the field." It is well known the odds he had to battle with, including the vilest ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Poltyev, I remember well to this day. He was a genuine old-world landowner, a God-fearing, sedate man, fairly—for those days—well educated, just a little cracked, to tell the truth—and, moreover, he suffered from epilepsy.... That too is an old-world, gentlemanly complaint.... Andrei Nikolaevitch's fits were, however, slight, and generally ended in sleep and depression. He was good-hearted, and of an affable demeanour, not without a certain stateliness: I ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Hooniah shrank back. But so swiftly did he spring forward, with in-turned eyeballs and loosened jaw, that she stumbled and fell down grovelling at his feet. He waved his arms about, wildly flagellating the air, his body writhing and twisting in torment. An epilepsy seemed to come upon him. A white froth flecked his lips, and his body was convulsed ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... the operation, beyond the atmosphere of large cities, is neither dangerous in its consequences nor difficult in the execution." In this remark Dr. Dudley bore early testimony to the efficacy of aseptic surgery. He urged the trephine in the treatment of epilepsy and applied it in six cases—in four of which the disease was cured. The result in the two remaining cases is unknown, because the patients ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... followed the custom of retiring for meditation and prayer to the lonely and desolate Mount Hira. A vivid sense of the being of one Almighty God and of his own responsibility to God, entered into his soul. A tendency to hysteria in the East a disease of men as well as of women—and to epilepsy helps to account for extraordinary states of body and mind of which he was the subject. At first he ascribed his strange ecstasies, or hallucinations, to evil spirits, especially on the occasion when an angel directed him to begin the work of prophesying. But he was persuaded by Khadija ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
