Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/20

PREFACE clergymen, one of them brilliant as scholar and orator, the others successful as pastors, and an author of profound and witty books—two of them popular enough to have been translated into foreign tongues. Among his patients have been affluent business men, musicians, organists, and other instrumental soloists, commanding leading positions and public applause.

Some of them have been entirely cured. In others suspension of convulsions and all symptoms of the disease entirely subsided during a treatment that was so mild as to be only beneficially felt. And all, even the worst, with a few exceptions, were helped.

The critical reader may remember that these simple outlines, not pretending to the dignity of finished portraits of these eminent men,—Cæsar, Mohammed, Byron, never before recognized in detail and definitely as epileptics,—were written during snatched intervals between the consultations of a busy practitioner, more deeply interested in the cure of the sick than in the writing of biographies. Much of the work was done while patients were assembling in his reception room.

If he had had more leisure, the descriptions would have been shorter,—since even manufactured brevity may be the soul of wit. The sentences would have been turned with nicer felicity, and more attention would have been given to the elegancies of literary polish, and as a matter of mere phraseological mechanics, a more careful dove-tailing of episode, allusion, and pathologic hint would have been made. xiv