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Epilepsy   /ˈɛpəlˌɛpsi/   Listen
Epilepsy

noun
1.
A disorder of the central nervous system characterized by loss of consciousness and convulsions.



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"Epilepsy" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 in that of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... impression was that he was struck by a fit of epilepsy,— though anyone less like an epileptic subject it would be hard to find. In my bewilderment I looked round to see what could be the immediate cause. My eye fell upon the sheet of paper, I stared at it with considerable surprise. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... was the answer. "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 because tuberculosis gets ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... in 1846, he was on the verge of insanity. Even at that time he had begun to have attacks by night of that "mystical terror," which he has described in detail in "Humiliated and Insulted," and he also had occasional epileptic fits. In Siberia epilepsy developed to such a point that it was no longer possible to entertain any doubt as to the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... epilepsy, or "fits," is confined to a half dozen cases, in which permanent relief seems to be assured. There is an acquired structural abnormality behind the spasms, acquired from surplus food, with a cure to be reached ultimately in most cases along these ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... maladies as affect others, and are either dangerous or disagreeable to them. Of the epilepsy; because it gives a horror to every one present: Of the itch; because it is infectious: Of the king's-evil; because it commonly goes to posterity. Men always consider the sentiments of others in their judgment of themselves. This has evidently appeared in ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... means of nutrition in the nervous 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. If so, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... 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, ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... writer has raised 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 ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... Russel, alias "Countess," committed to Newgate by Sir Wm. Slingsby on a charge by Lady Jennings of injuring her daughter. Dr. Napier diagnosed the daughter's illness as epilepsy. Brit. Mus., ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... will generally be found in these cases: Headache, weight, fullness, and throbbing in the 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

... 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 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 ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... would have been likely to confide much to her spiritual director. The early Wesleyans had all the exaltation of the Quietists, and something of the lunatic fervour of the Convulsionists, who kicked and screamed themselves into epilepsy under the influence of the Unigenitus Bull. The pious Rebecca ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. To swell a man with a tympany is as good sport as to blow a frog. 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. As they are wiser and more powerful than we, they have more exquisite diversions; for we have no way of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as the paroxysms ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... The often-quoted case of a disease induced by mutilation being inherited (Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs) has been discussed by Professor Weismann, and shown to be not conclusive. The mutilation itself—a section of certain nerves—was never inherited, but the resulting epilepsy, or a general state of weakness, deformity, or sores, was sometimes inherited. It is, however, possible that the mere injury introduced and encouraged the growth of certain microbes, which, spreading through the organism, sometimes ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... that followed were not wanting in signs of the coming storm. On the 2nd of March 1835 Francis I. died, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand I. The new emperor was personally amiable, but so enfeebled by epilepsy as to be incapable of ruling; a veiled regency had to be constituted to carry on the government, and the vices of the administration were further accentuated by weakness and divided counsels at the centre. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... how to give it a suppleness, a variety, and a freedom which were always wanting in Flaubert. The latter, in his best pages, is always strained. To use the expressive metaphor of the Greek athletes, he "smells of the oil." When one recalls that when attacked by hysteric epilepsy, Flaubert postponed the crisis of the terrible malady by means of sedatives, this strained atmosphere of labor—I was going to say of stupor—which pervades his work is explained. He is an athlete, a runner, but one who drags ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... it may equally well be transferred to an animal or a thing, though in the last case the thing is often only a vehicle to convey the trouble to the first person who touches it. In some of the East Indian islands they think that epilepsy can be cured by striking the patient on the face with the leaves of certain trees and then throwing them away. The disease is believed to have passed into the leaves, and to have been thrown away with them. To cure toothache ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... to the organic diseases enumerated above, and delirium tremens, the following diseases are frequently the result of the excessive use of alcoholic liquors: epilepsy, paralysis, insanity, diabetes, gravel, and diseases ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... evil, as Leanness, dryness, hollow-eyed, &c. Inveterate melancholy is incurable. If cold, it degenerates often into epilepsy, apoplexy, dotage, or into blindness. If hot, into madness, despair, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... fixed 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, but ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... 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 (recitative in F major). His wife encourages the disciples (aria, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... colics, toothache, ague, colds, obstructions through wind, and fits of the mother [hysterics]; gout, epilepsy, and hydropsy [dropsy]. The brain, look you, being naturally cold and wet, all hot and dry things ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... and nervous system: indicated by such names as apoplexy, epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, loss of memory and that general failure of the mental power called dementia. (b) Diseases of the lungs: one form of consumption, congestion and subsequent bronchitis. (c) Diseases ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... 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 ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... was greatly swelled, and imbued with a pituitous humor ... and bent and drawn back. There was a large bedsore; he could rest neither day nor night; and had no appetite to eat, but very thirsty. I was told he often fell into a faintness of the heart, and sometimes as in epilepsy: and often he felt sick, with such trembling he could not carry his hands to his mouth. Seeing and considering all these great complications, and the vital powers thus broken down, truly I was very sorry I had come to him, because it seemed to me there was little ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... discipleship of the Goncourts, Daudet, Zola, and Maupassant and the applause of such connoisseurs of technique as Walter Pater and Henry James. From his mother's Norman ancestry he inherited the physique of a giant, tainted with epilepsy; a Viking countenance, strong- featured with leonine moustaches; and a barbaric temper, habitually somewhat lethargic but irritable, and, when roused, violent and intolerant of opposition. He had a private education at Rouen, with wide desultory reading; went to Paris, which he hated, to study law, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... importance is often assigned.[1] In this regard paling has received less general attention because it is more rare and less suspicious. That it can not be simulated, as is frequently asserted in discussions of simulation (especially of epilepsy), is not true, inasmuch as there exists an especial physiological process which succeeds in causing pallor artificially. In that experiment the chest is very forcibly contracted, the glottis is closed and the muscles used in inspiration are contracted. This matter has no practical ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... 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 ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... 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, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... 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 ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of the mortuary statistics of a large town is no easy matter, and I must therefore ask that I may be supposed to have taken every possible precaution in order not to exaggerate the reality of a great evil. Certain diseases, such as apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, St. Vitus's dance, and lockjaw or tetanus, we all agree to consider as nervous maladies; convulsions, and the vast number of cases known in the death-lists as dropsy of the brain, effusion on the brain, etc., are to be looked upon with more doubt. The ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... EPILEPSY.—"It hath beene of later experience found also to be effectual against the falling sicknesse, that divers have been cured thereby; for after the taking of the Decoct. manipulor. ii. c. polypod. quercin. contus. [Symbol: ounce]iv. ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... death, by sickness in hospital and camp, and by temporary depression, is not all that the army is subject to. Those who are laboring under consumption, asthma, epilepsy, insanity, and other incurable disorders, and those whose constitutions are broken, or withered and reduced below the standard of military requirement, are generally, and by some Governments always, discharged. These pass back to the general community, where they finally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... baker?' 'No, Mr. 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

... of mania—subinduced By epilepsy, at the turning-point 80 Of trance prolonged unduly some three days: When, by the exhibition of some drug Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art Unknown to me and which 't were well to know, The evil thing out-breaking all at ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... wretched profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face, and not a tooth in his head." on which the editor of that curious little book, Lord Hailes, remarks, "Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of the epilepsy, entered upon and persisted in a very strict regimen, and thus stopped the progress and prevented the effects of that dreadful disease. His daily food was a small quantity of asses' milk and a flour biscuit. Once a week he indulged himself ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... koverto. Envenom veneni. Enviable enviinda. Envious enviema. Environs cxirkauxajxo. Envoy sendito. Envy envii. Epaulet epoleto. Ephemeral mallonga, efemera. Epic epopea. Epic epopeo. Epicure epikuristo. Epidemic epidemio. Epidermis epidermo. Epigram epigramo. Epilepsy epilepsio. Epileptic epilepsia. Epileptic (person) epilepsiulo. Epilogue epilogo. Epiphany Epifanio. Episcopacy episkopeco. Episode epizodo. Epistle letero. Epistolary letera. Epitaph epitafo. Epithet epiteto. Epitome resumo. Epitomise mallongigi. Epoch epoko. Equable ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... "demoness of sickness is Bath-Chorin. She touches the hands and lower limbs by night. Many diseases are caused by demons." According to Josephus, "to demons may be ascribed leprosy, rabies, asthma, cardiac diseases, nervous diseases, which last are the specialty of evil demons, such as epilepsy." Incantations were in use among the later Jews, and amulets of neck-chains like serpents and ear-rings were employed to protect the wearers against the evil ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... 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 in two ways. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... counsel hast thou to offer.' Answered I, 'My advice is that thou take what thou canst of thy property and whom of thy slaves thou trustest, and flee with us to a land other than this, ere this very day come to an end.' And he said, 'I hear and I obey.' So he rose, confused and dazed like one in epilepsy, now walking and now falling, and took what came under his hand. Then he made an excuse to his household and gave them his last injunctions, after which he loaded three camels and mounted his beast; and I did likewise. We went ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... causes affecting 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, chicken-pox, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... touched any stimulant. This is much worse than that,—this means epilepsy, Mac, and we may have to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... 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 out," i. e. "is cured by spitting." Celsus thus describes the "comitialis ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... (Vol. vii., p. 146.).—In Norfolk, a ring made from nine sixpences freely given by persons of the opposite sex is considered a charm against epilepsy. I have seen nine sixpences brought to a silversmith, with a request that he would make them into a ring; but 131/2d. was not tendered to him for making, nor do I think that any threehalfpences are collected for payment. After ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... friends and not very distant neighbours in the south of England of the late Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, experienced some singular phenomena. Lord Sydney was a great hypnotist, and cured, or believed he cured, many cases of epilepsy. The officer in question suffered at times from a tickling in his face, which annoyed him very much; it seemed to be more on the cheeks than in the corners behind ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... death. If it fall upon the liver, its tender pulpy substance is soon destroyed, jaundices beyond the help of art first follow, then dropsies and all their train of misery; if on lungs, consumptions; if on the brain, convulsions, epilepsy, palsy, apoplexy; if on the ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill

... much pease and pullet broth. In "O Muata Cazembe "(pp. 65-66), we find that the Asiatic Portuguese attach great value to the hoof of the Nhumbo (A. gnu), they call it "unha de grabesta," and use it even in the gotta-coral (epilepsy). ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... 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 ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... reason 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, ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... done. Day was so long, men walking fell asleep; The heavy humours that their eyes did steep Made them fear mischiefs. The hard streets were beds For covetous churls and for ambitious heads, That, spite of Nature, would their business ply: All thought they had the falling epilepsy, Men grovell'd so upon the smother'd ground; And pity did the heart of Heaven confound. 20 The Gods, the Graces, and the Muses came Down to the Destinies, to stay the frame Of the true lovers' deaths, and all world's tears: But Death before had stopp'd their cruel ears. All ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... conclusive than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is espoused by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, tom. i. p. 301,) Gagnier, (ad Abulfedam, p. 9. Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 118,) and Sale, (Koran, p. 469-474.) * Note: Dr Weil believes in the epilepsy, and adduces strong evidence for it; and surely it may be believed, in perfect charity; and that the prophet's visions were connected, as they appear to have been, with these fits. I have little doubt that he saw ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... arm and listened to the breathing. From time to time a convulsive sob heaved the sick man's heart, after which followed a succession of quick, short respirations. A kind of nightmare was evidently weighing him down—epilepsy, perhaps, or tetanus. But what could be the cause ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... diseases, by abnormally stimulating the emotions, predispose strongly to religious fervor. Epilepsy is one of these, and in Swedenborg and Mohammed, both epileptics, we see distinguished examples of religious mystics, who, no doubt honestly, accepted the visions which accompanied their disease as revelations ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... that you may understand me the better, why have those that guzzle a great Deal of Wine bad Memories? Why are those that feed upon light Food, not of so heavy a Disposition? Why does Coriander help the Memory? Why does Hellebore purge the Memory? Why does a great Expletion cause an Epilepsy, which at once brings a Stupor upon all the Senses, as in a profound Sleep? In the last Place, as violent Thirst or Want weaken the Strength of Wit or Memory in Boys, so Food eaten immoderately makes ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... exclamation which I recognize. It is Petronius, the unprincipled scoundrel, who is uncording a bed, dragging remorselessly through innumerable holes the long rope whose doleful wail came near giving me an epilepsy. My savage lets loose the dogs of war. Petronius would fain defend himself by declaring that it is morning. I indignantly deny it. He produces his watch. A fig for his watch! I stake my consciousness against twenty watches, and go to bed again; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of the wonderful. In this wail is manifested vaguely all that the vast dark palpitation endures, suffers, accepts, rejects. For the most part it talks nonsense; it is like an access of chronic sickness, and rather an epilepsy diffused than a force employed; we fancy that we are witnessing the descent of supreme evil into the infinite. At moments we seem to discern a reclamation of the elements, some vain effort of chaos to reassert itself over creation. At ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Indian shells,— Dishes of 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, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... sitting in a chair with a knife in his hand was told to throw it, and he threw it quickly, so that it stuck in a beam opposite; at the same time he repeated the order to throw it with a cry of alarm not unlike that of hysteria or epilepsy. He also threw away his pipe, which he was filling with tobacco, when he was slapped upon the shoulder. Two jumpers standing near each other were told to strike, and they struck each other very forcibly. One jumper, when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... above 70 years Epilepsy and planet Abortive and still-born Fever and ague Childbed women Pleurisy Convulsion Quinsy Teeth Executed, murdered, Worms drowned Gout and sciatica Plague and spotted fever Stone Griping of the guts Palsy Scouring, vomiting Consumption and French bleeding pox Small pox Dropsy and ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... rise from dust forever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of mighty abysses!—-vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shivering scroll 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 mosaic of dreams? Fragments of music too passionate, heard once and heard no more, what aileth ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... 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 Day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various

... Dr Y. his right arm, and Dr Z. his left; both agreed that he was absolutely dead; but as to the distemper, or cause of his death, they differed; Dr Y. holding that he died of an apoplexy, and Dr Z. of an epilepsy. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... 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 to her body to keep it in position. She was groaning ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... reveal anywhere a very scientific attitude toward Nature. Yet he was here probably only giving expression to the current medical doctrine of his day. We find precisely the same doctrine attributed to Hippocrates, though without a clear distinction between hysteria and epilepsy.[254] If we turn to the best Roman physicians we find again that Aretaeus, "the Esquirol of antiquity," has set forth the same view, adding to his description of the movements of the womb in hysteria: "It delights, also, in fragrant smells, and advances toward them; and it has an aversion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... resemble the one who contributes most to the formation of the parts." Such was the Hippocratic theory of generation and heredity, and it was ingeniously used to explain the hereditary nature of certain diseases and malformations. For instance, in speaking of the sacred disease (epilepsy), Hippocrates says: "Its origin is hereditary, like that of other diseases; for if a phlegmatic person be born of a phlegmatic, and a bilious of a bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen disease of another having disease ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... and some of them serious, among which may be enumerated the following; namely, vomiting, diarrh[oe]a, general debility, scrofula, tabes mesenterica,—rickets, convulsions, epilepsy,—and lastly meningitis, or that peculiar inflammation of the investing membranes of the brain which gives rise to the effusion of serum, constituting the well known and very fatal disease termed by medical practitioners Hydrocephalus, ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... with sudden passionate crying. 'Oh, dunna, dunna!' she sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering, flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She, in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with grief, but reviled and rejected. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... German proverb: Dich hat greitten der Mar. The word is derived from Mar, a horse, and becomes nightmare in English, Cauchemar in French, [Greek: Ephialtes] in Greek, meaning one which rides upon another. So with epilepsy, which signifies the act of being seized by any one; it was, like all nervous diseases, held to be a sacred evil, and those afflicted by it were supposed to be possessed. Insanity was regarded in the same way, as we see in the Bible where Saul's melancholy is said to be an ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... in character, is capable of betterment, and this is possible of every man.) Many causes operate to account for his production, some of them reaching far back into his ancestry. When this is the case some physical handicap is always present, such as e.g. cerebral irritation and epilepsy. ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... Casal, he learned that one of his religious was suffering under an extraordinary disorder, which some considered to be epilepsy, and others thought it a true case of possession by the devil, for he had all the violent contortions of those possessed. The Father, who was full of tender compassion for the suffering, was greatly afflicted ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... community, it should always be remembered that feeble-mindedness is not an unrelated expression of modern civilization. Its roots strike deep into the social fabric. Modern studies indicate that insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and mental defect, are all organically bound up together and that the least intelligent and the thoroughly degenerate classes in every community are the most prolific. Feeble-mindedness in one generation becomes ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... letter was duly received. I proceed to say that, since I settled in this town, my attacks of epilepsy[6] have occurred in ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... time, however, he was attacked with convulsions, which were pronounced by the physicians examined before the board to be a form of epilepsy, and for this cause he was found to be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... skillful hands 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

... to grave nervous disease. Epilepsy at once comes before us, all the more significantly since it has been considered, more especially by Lombroso, to be the special disease through which genius peculiarly manifests itself. It is true that much importance here is attached to those minor forms of epilepsy which ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... earth, that he fed his cattle and had possessions, and that he was not utterly ejected from the society and fellowship of men. For God could not only have deprived Cain of all these blessings, but he could have added pestilence, epilepsy, apoplexy, the stone, the gout, and any other disease. And yet there are men disposed curiously to argue in what manner God could possibly have multiplied the curse of Cain sevenfold on himself ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... children who came to his 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 ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... tall tree, of 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 ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... Magnan, 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... rapturous prophecy like that of David, but in a stupendous conjecture of the heart which all the scepticism of the brain of a man of science cannot banish or reduce to insignificance. The unaccountable fascination of this case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy, is not to be resisted; Karshish would write, if he could, of more important matters than the madman of Bethany; he would record his discoveries in scalp-disease, describe the peculiar qualities of Judea's gum-tragacanth, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... had a great fright from a viper—a fright which threw him off his balance, and started the series of psychical oscillations on which he has been tossed ever since. At first the symptoms were only physical, epilepsy and hysterical paralysis of the legs; and at the asylum of Bonneval, whither he was next sent, he worked at tailoring steadily for a couple of months. Then suddenly he had a hystero-epileptic attack—fifty hours of convulsions ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... reunites, as the case may be, for a period measured, as we see, in Section 37. The maximum will extend to days, the minimum is little more than a second. We see the operation of this principle perfectly displayed, in certain cases of lunacy, of epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania, of a peculiar and painful character, though unattended by ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Rios, native of Extremadura, a zealous servant of God and an eloquent preacher. He returned to Nueva Espana, in search of health, and afterward lived for some years there without it, in the hope of returning; but he died in that country, from epilepsy. But it is always thought that he, who was so spiritual, must ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... green motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... as headache, 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

... same year, the Duke had an attack of epilepsy, which for a short time alarmed the public greatly for his safety, on account of his advanced age. Sir Astley Cooper and Dr. Hume were down at Walmer with him for a week, at the end of which time he recovered, greatly to the joy of the whole nation. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring had been dipped cured lunacy; oil of a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured fevers; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher cured throat disease; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... discovered 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 ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... they are prone to fevers and blood diseases, especially in their early life. In youth they are also very liable to fits, epilepsy, severe headaches, often water on the brain, and suffer greatly ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro

... now seems to be all right again. This makes the fourth that has had a similar attack. What can it possibly be? It cannot be hydrophobia, or it would have appeared among the grown-up dogs. Can it be toothache, or hereditary epilepsy—or some other infernal thing?" Unfortunately, several of them died from these strange attacks. The puppies were such fine, nice animals, that we were all very sorry when a thing like ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... figures so much that the work can hardly be judged fairly. When photographed they look much better, and Signor Pizetta tells me he was last year commissioned to photograph the boy, who is in a fit of hystero- epilepsy, for a medical work that was being published in France, so it is probably very ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... Dissolvene Rubber Garments Downs' Obesity Reducer Drosis Duponts Hair Restorative Dyspepsia Remedy, Graham's Elastic Stockings El Perfecto Veda Rose Rouge Empress Hair Color Restorer Empress Shampoo Soap Euca-Scentol Femaform Cones Golden Remedy for Epilepsy Golden Rule Hair Restorative Goodwin's Corn Salve Goodwin's Foot Powder Gowans Pneumonia Preparation Graves' (Dr.) Tooth Powder Gray's Ointment Great Western Champagne Grube's Corn Remover Guild's Asthma Cure Harvard Athletic Supports Heel Cushions Hegeman's Camphor Ice Hill's Chloride of Gold Tablets ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... 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 wife of Saak, the ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... disorders met our observation. A solitary case of epilepsy was seen in a deaf and dumb boy, who eventually died. Chronic rheumatism occurs, but it is rare and not severe. I have some doubt in saying that scurvy exists among them. A disease, however, having ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... deed cast a shadow in advance? Does premeditated crime spread a baleful aura which affects certain highly-strung temperaments just as the sensation of a wave of cold air rising from the spine to the head may be a forewarning of epilepsy or hysteria? John Trenholme had cause to think so one bright June morning in 1912, and he has never ceased to believe it, though the events which made him an outstanding figure in the "Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley," as the murder of a prominent man in the City of London came to be known, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... extravasation into the brain or membranes; or (2.) it may be required in cases of punctured and depressed fracture for the purpose of removing projecting corners of bone and allowing elevation of the depressed portions; or (3.) it is sometimes used to remove a circular portion of bone in cases of epilepsy in which pain or tenderness is felt at some limited portion ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... 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 nearly as those do who are attacked with a convulsive sense of the ridiculous, the epilepsy of the diaphragm. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... say about your pleasant old gentle-man with the umbrella sounds very much like masked epilepsy. Ought to be under ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... of the painter's life. It is not so novel as it is just and moderate in its application. The pathologic theory of genius has been overworked. In literature nowadays "psychiatrists" rush in where critics fear to tread. Mahomet was an epilept; so was Napoleon. Flaubert died of epilepsy, said his friends; nevertheless, Rene Dumesnil has proved that his sudden decease was caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neurasthenia. Eye strain played hob with the happiness of Carlyle, and an apostle of sweetness and light declared that ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... place I could get no money from the Court, and my wife, who had for a long time been suffering from low spirits and despondency, was taken violently ill towards the end of 1610, with the Hungarian fever, epilepsy and phrenitis. She was scarcely convalescent when all my three children were at once attacked with smallpox. Leopold with his army occupied the town beyond the river just as I lost the dearest of my sons, ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... 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 seem ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by substituting for neurosis in general a specific neurosis—larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has compromised everything in wanting to make the term too precise. There are several possible hypotheses, they say: either the neuropathic state ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... breakdown. Epilepsy. Tumor or break in brain. Cranial neuralgia. Disease of neck bones. Adenoids. Ear disease. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... relieve spasm, or irregular and painful action of the muscles or muscular fibers, as in Epilepsy, St. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... therefore of asthenic disease, first impair the functions, then occasion a disturbed or inordinate action of them, giving many of them a false appearance; some of them, for instance, appear to be increased, for in hysteria and epilepsy, which are both diseases of debility, the action of the muscles seems to be preternaturally increased; but this depends chiefly on the accumulated excitability, which gives such a degree of irritability ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... TOOTHACHE—St Vitus dance, Epilepsy, Fevers, diseases of the eye, nose, antrum, throat, muscles, cholera, all diseases of the ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... all that had ever been known in the virulence of its invective against "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 ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... possibly that of saint Paul, might not be so easily explained in this simple way. The result, then, would have to be ascribed either to a merely physiological nerve storm, a "discharging lesion" like that of epilepsy; or, in case it were useful and rational, as in the two latter cases named, to some more mystical or theological hypothesis. I make this remark in order that the reader may realize that the subject is really complex. But ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... variety of ways and not the least by providing against sexual excesses and abuses. These are a copious fountain of ill to humanity. A host of diseases, such as tuberculosis, diabetes, cardial and nervous affections, epilepsy, hysteria, general debility, weaknesses of sight, languor and general worthlessness, hypochondria, weakness and total loss of reason, and, in married life, impotence and sterility are some of the effects of venereal ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens



Words linked to "Epilepsy" :   brain disorder, grand mal epilepsy, epileptic seizure, epilepsia major, brain disease, reflex epilepsy, epilepsia minor, grand mal, psychomotor epilepsy, Lafora's disease, epileptic, petit mal, petit mal epilepsy, status epilepticus, encephalopathy



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