Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/28

 CHAPTER II

As a first illustration of an epileptic with every faculty apparently unimpaired, we will begin with Cæsar. According to Plutarch, he "was of slender make, fair of feature, pale, emaciated, of a delicate constitution, subject to severe headache and violent attacks of epilepsy." He was born on the twelfth of July, about one hundred years before the birth of Christ. Even in his seventeenth year he was so conspicuous a person that he broke his engagement with one woman, although she was of consular and opulent family, to marry another, Cornelia, daughter of the celebrated Cinna. In consequence of this alliance he was made Flamen Dialis, or priest of Jupiter, an office which with this exception was only given to persons of mature years.

It is singular in this connection that of the three persons we have selected in elucidation of our theory, the two monogamous men were notable for precocious love-affairs, while the polygamous one,—Mohammed,—did not fall in love until his twenty-ninth year, and then with a quiet, middle-aged widow, fifteen years his senior. Unlike the other two, Christian and pagan, respectively, he lived loyally with her for twenty-two years—until her death.

So important as a prospective enemy was Cæsar