t tendency on their part to become habitual.
In the same way, the attacks which follow on constipation, or on
indigestion, or on some other definite exciting cause, may probably with
care be guarded against, and their return prevented. It is not the
violence of a single fit, nor even the frequent return of fits for a
limited time, which warrants the gravest apprehension; but it is their
recurrence when all observable causes of irritation have passed away; it
is their return when the child is otherwise apparently in perfect
health.

If, on the one hand, the violence of a convulsion does not by any means
imply the greater proportionate risk of its recurrence, so neither can
any hopeful conclusion be drawn from the slightness of an attack, or
from its momentary duration. In childhood, such attacks are at least as
common preludes to confirmed epilepsy as in the adult, and are the more
deserving of attention from their very liability to be overlooked. I
believe, too, that an imperfect suspension of consciousness, the child
knowing what passes, though unable to speak, is not very uncommon, and
further, that it is far from unusual to have the early stage of epilepsy
in childhood announced by sudden incoherent talking for a few seconds,
or by a wild look; a cry of surprise, or a short fit of sobbing,
announcing as in a hysterical girl, the close of the paroxysm. The early
symptoms of epilepsy in childhood are also the more likely to be
misinterpreted from the circumstance that they are frequently
accompanied by a moral perversion much more striking than any loss of
mental power. It is true that in early life there are alternations of
intellectual activity and mental indolence, of quickness and comparative
dulness, which all who have had much to do with education are well aware
of, and which are perfectly compatible with health of body and health of
mind. But changes in the moral character of a child who is still under
the same influences, have a far deeper meaning than is often attached to
them; a child does not suddenly become wayward, fretful, passionate, or
mischievous, except under the pressure of some grave cause.

One other point there is also to be borne in mind; namely, that the
child is compelled by the vague sensation of hitherto unknown dread, not
to conceal the early symptoms of epilepsy as the grown person would do;
longing as the child does for love and sympathy, and weakened in its
moral force, it craves for mor