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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
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