, both of
young women, one grain of opium given at night, and continued many months,
had success; in one of them the opium was omitted twice at different times,
and the fit recurred on both the nights. In the more violent case,
described in Sect. XVIII. 15, opium had no effect.

Epileptic fits generally commence with setting the teeth, by which means
the tongue is frequently wounded; and with rolling the eyeballs in every
kind of direction; for the muscles which suspend the jaw, as well as those
which move the eyes, are in perpetual motion during our waking hours; and
yet continue subservient to volition; hence their more facile and forcible
actions for the purpose of relieving pain by the exhaustion of sensorial
power. See Section XXXIV. 1. 4.

Epileptic convulsions are not attended with the fear of death, as in the
hysteric disease, and the urine is of a straw colour. However it must be
noted, that the disagreeable sensations in hysteric diseases sometimes are
the cause of true epileptic convulsions, of syncope, and of madness.

The pain, which occasions some fits of epilepsy, is felt for a time in a
distant part of the system, as in a toe or heel; and is said by the patient
gradually to ascend to the head, before the general convulsions commence.
This ascending sensation has been called aura epileptica, and is said to
have been prevented from affecting the head by a tight bandage round the
limb. In this malady the pain, probably of some torpid membrane, or
diseased tendon, is at first only so great as to induce slight spasms of
the muscular fibres in its vicinity; which slight spasms cease on the
numbness introduced by a tight bandage; when no bandage is applied, the
pain gradually increases, till generally convulsions are exerted to relieve
it. The course of a lymphatic, as when poisonous matter is absorbed; or of
a nerve, as in the sciatica, may, by the sympathy existing between their
extremities and origins, give an idea of the ascent of an aura or vapour.

In difficult parturition it sometimes happens, that general convulsions are
excited to relieve the pain of labour, instead of the exertions of those
muscles of the abdomen and diaphragm, which ought to forward the exclusion
of the child. See Class III. 1. 1. That is, instead of the particular
muscular actions, which ought to be excited by sensation to remove the
offending cause, general convulsions are produced by the power of volition,
which still the pain,