efinite cause; it may be indigestion, or constipation, or the cutting
of the second set of teeth, and on the irritation produced by those
teeth being too crowded. Thus, I remember a boy twelve years old, in
whom two severe epileptic fits occurred apparently without cause. He was
cutting his back grinding teeth, and in the lower jaw the teeth seemed
overcrowded. I had a tooth extracted on either side, the fits ceased,
and when I last heard of him many years afterwards they had not
returned.

Epilepsy often lasts for many years, and no one's memory is retentive
enough to be trusted with all the details between the different attacks,
the causes which seemed to produce them, the measures which appeared at
different times to be of service. I am therefore accustomed to advise
people, any of whose children have the misfortune to be epileptic, to
write as brief an account as possible of the child's previous history,
and to supplement it by a daily record kept in parallel columns of date,
food, state of bowels, sleep, medicine, attacks, specifying their
character and duration; and general remarks, which would bear on the
child's temper and general condition, and in which column any probable
exciting cause of an attack would be recorded. It is surprising how much
important information is gathered in a few months from such a record
kept faithfully.

The diet should be mild, nutritious, but as a general rule
unstimulating; and should include meat comparatively seldom, and in
small quantities. Some fifty years ago, a very distinguished American
physician, Dr. Jackson of Boston, in the United States, insisted very
strongly on the importance of a diet exclusively of milk and vegetables
in greatly lessening the frequency and severity of epileptic attacks. I
believe in the great majority of cases of epilepsy in childhood Dr.
Jackson's advice is worth following. And I may add that, while I have
little faith in the influence of mere drugs, I have a yearly increasing
confidence in that of judicious management, mental and moral, as well as
physical.

The first requisite in all cases is a firm and gentle rule of love on
the part of those who have charge of the child. As violent and sudden
excitement of any kind will often bring on an epileptic seizure, so the
influence of the opposite condition in warding off its attacks is very
remarkable; and on several occasions I have received patients into the
Children's Hospital who were reported to