e love, more sympathy, it exaggerates its
symptoms, it assumes some which do not exist at all. The conclusion is a
natural one, but none the less mistaken, that the child who is
discovered to be shamming has nothing the matter with it--is simply a
naughty child. This is a fact of much importance, on which I shall have
occasion to insist further on.

In the child, as in the adult, epilepsy blunts the intellect as well as
weakens the moral powers; and does both more speedily and more
effectually in proportion as the child is younger, and its mind and will
are less developed. And yet this has its compensation; for as the powers
fade quickly, so, if the attacks cease, they recover with surprising
rapidity, and as the moral powers are the first to suffer, so they are
the first to regain--I will not say full vigour, but at least a degree
which raises the children to be objects of specially tender affection,
rather than of pity and compassion.

The conditions which justify the most hopeful view of any case of
epilepsy are then, first, the absence of any history of frequently
recurring convulsions in early infancy; secondly, the existence of a
distinct exciting cause for the attacks; thirdly, the rarity of their
return far more than their slight severity; and lastly, the more the
attacks approach in character to what one knows as hysteria, the less
profound the insensibility in the fit, the shorter its duration
afterwards, the greater are the grounds for hope that the seizures will
eventually cease.

Cases of this last class are to some degree, at any rate, under the
child's control. I have several times seen a fit warded off by the
threat of the shower bath, or even by calling to the child, and sending
it to fetch something in another room. Such cases may indeed pass into
ordinary epilepsy, but often, under judicious management, moral rather
than medical, they cease, so that one can venture on taking a more
hopeful view of them than of others.

And this brings me to the question of what can be done, or rather what
can parents do to promote recovery from epilepsy. First of all, do not
listen to what you may hear about this medicine or the other being a
specific for it. There is no specific whatever for epilepsy, but there
are certain remedies which in skilful hands do have a real though
limited power to control the frequency and lessen the severity of the
attacks. Next, there are cases in which the attacks depend on some
d