CHAPTER XXIII

WORK AND PLAY

Although most people would assume that epileptics are unable to follow a
trade, there is hardly an occupation from medicine to mining, from
agriculture to acting, that does not include epileptics among its votaries.

Outdoor occupations involving but little mental work or responsibility are
best, but unfortunately just those which promise excitement and change are
those which appeal to the neuropath.

A light, clean, manual trade should be chosen, and those that mean work in
stuffy factories, amid whirring wheels and harmful fumes, using dangerous
tools, or climbing ladders, must be avoided.

For the fairly robust, gardening or farming are good occupations, such
workers getting pure air, continuous exercise, and little brain-work.
Wood-working trades are good, if dangerous tools like circular saws are
left to others.

For the frail neuropath with a fair education, drawing, modelling,
book-keeping, and similar semi-sedentary work may do. Other patients might
be suited as shoemakers, stonemasons, painters, plumbers or domestic
servants, so long as they always work on the ground.

Some work is essential; better an unsuitable occupation than none at all,
for the downward tendency of the complaint is sufficiently marked without
the victim becoming an idler. Work gives stability.

Epilepsy limits patients to a humble sphere, and though this is hard to a
man of talent, it is but one of many hard lessons, the hardest being to
realize clearly his own limitations.

If seizures be frequent, the ignorant often refuse to work with a victim,
who can only procure odd jobs, in which case he should strive to find
home-work, at which he can work slowly and go to bed when he feels ill. A
card in the window, a few handbills distributed in the district, judicious
canvassing, and perhaps the patronage of the local doctor and clergy may
procure enough work to pay expenses and leave a little over, for the
essential thing is to occupy the mind and exercise the body, not to make
money.

Very few trades can be plied at home and many swindlers obtain money under
the pretence of finding such employment, charging an excessive price for an
"outfit", and then refusing to buy the output, usually on the pretext that
it is inferior. Envelope-addressing, postcard-painting and machine-knitting
have all been abused to this end.

An auto-knitter seems to offer possibilities, but victims must investigate
offers c