Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/26

20 convincing eloquence. Another was a voluminous author, with some of his books translated into foreign tongues. One of the worst examples we have ever known to get well, a man who in fifty years had had twenty-eight thousand convulsions, besides numerous psychic attacks, managed his own ample estate and his home with prudence. This of course was very exceptional as was also his complete cure.

It would be possible, we imagine, for many of us to select from our own case-books,—especially if we followed our patients into their private lives,—illustrations just as interesting. And if it were not for the misery-producing bias against fits we could give names of persons who in spite of epilepsy were efficient in various vocations.

Many distempers are objects of sympathetic concern in these tolerant days, when everybody seems interested in the study of medicine. Yet, notwithstanding the fact of the great multitude of medical amateurs, if a man happens to be a victim of the malady that has been contemporary with all ages, if mentioned at all, it is only under the breath, just as in the days of rampant superstition when to be an epileptic was to be possessed of demons. Still, although a man be dead, because of this prejudice it is not well even then to speak of him by name as a victim of epilepsy for fear of hurting the susceptibilities of survivors.

Of epileptics long dead we may speak openly. And the three men of supreme intellect whom we have