Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/38

32 say, coming in the wake of some previously present disease or condition, the removal of which cures the epilepsy.

But to return again to our waiting Cæsar. He never but once made his infirmity an excuse for anything that happened or a reason for the avoidance of duty, as he might have done.

Even when he came to unbridged rivers during his campaigns he swam across them, sometimes helped by inflated bladders, but usually unaided. Once, having a seizure in the water, he cried out, you remember, "Help me, Cassius, or I perish!"

He explored personally and afoot conquered cities, accompanied by way of precaution by but one or two servants,—an admirable precaution for epileptics, when at all possible. If the company of a servant or friend is not available, then epileptics should always carry a card in their wallet, giving name and address and announcing the particulars of their ailment. Because of not having taken this precaution many an innocent person, in spite of incoherent remonstrance, has been marched off to a police station and locked up with criminals. This is more likely to occur after the convulsion, when the patient, having regained the upright position, attempts to walk. The unsteady gait, vacant gaze, disordered and soiled clothing, are so suggestive of helpless intoxication that you can hardly expect the officer, even with best intentions, to distinguish between inebriety and the immediate sequelæ of an attack of epileptic convulsions.