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asmodic croup, not preceded nor attended by any sign of disease of the brain, and which end in the course of some hours or of a few days in death, the child being partly worn out by the violence of the muscular movements, partly by the disturbance of breathing which each fit occasions. Happily, however, in most of these instances the convulsions by degrees lessen both in violence and frequency, and the child recovers. =Epilepsy.=--There is one other point of view from which convulsions in infancy and early childhood must be looked on with apprehension, and that is from their being frequently followed in after years by _epilepsy_. In nearly a fifth of all cases of epilepsy in childhood that have come under my notice the first occurrence of fits dated back to early infancy, and this, even though an interval of years had passed between the last fit in infancy and the first in childhood. It seems, indeed, as though there were in these cases a peculiar abiding sensitiveness of the nervous system, which, dating back from very early life, dependent often on hereditary predisposition, was kindled into activity by any special cause, such as the cutting of the second set of teeth, or the transition from boyhood or girlhood to manhood or womanhood. In the child, just as in the grown person, epilepsy manifests itself in two different ways; either by momentary unconsciousness, or by violent convulsions, in which latter there is little distinction from the occasional fit which may be observed at any period of infancy. The attacks of momentary unconsciousness often pass long unnoticed. They occur, perhaps, when the child is at play or at meals; it stops as if dazed, its eye fixed on vacancy; if standing, it does not fall, nor does it drop the toy or the spoon which it was holding from its hand. If speaking, it just breaks off in the midst of the half-uttered sentence. Then, in less time than it takes to tell, it suddenly looks up again, finishes what it was saying, or goes on with its play, or with its meal as though nothing had happened; or it suffices to call the child and the cloud passes from its face, and it is itself again; and the nurse or perhaps even the mother, thinks that it is some odd trick which the child has got. By degrees the attacks become more frequent, and may continue to recur several times a day without any obvious cause, even for months; and this without any change in their character. By degrees, however,
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