Epilepsy and other chronic convulsive disorders : their causes, symptoms, and treatment.

  • Gowers, W. R. (William Richard), 1845-1915.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy and other chronic convulsive disorders : their causes, symptoms, and treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    26/352 (page 6)
    LEEDS ^WfT'^T-RinH^C £OJCO-CH{RUnC.lCAL SUUlt iY 6 CHAPTEE 1. ETIOLOGY. The causes of epilepsy may be divided into those wliicli are remote, and those which are immediate. We must regard as the immediate or exciting cause that to which the first fit was apparently due. Of the two classes of causes, the former, the remote, is incomparably the more important. Most of the immediate causes of the first fit, although apparently influential in exciting it, are mani- festly inadequate, alone, to account for its occurrence. Their effect is rendered possible by the antecedent pre- disposition. In a large number of cases no exciting cause can be ascertained; the first attack is then apparently the result of the predisposition only. When one attack has occurred, whether in apparent consequence of an immediate excitant or not, others usually follow without any immediate traceable cause. The effect of a convulsion on the nerve centres is such as to render the occurrence of another more easy, to intensify the predisposition that already exists. Thus every fit may be said to be, in part, the result of those which have pre- ceded it, the cause of those which follow it. The search for the causes of epilepsy must thus be chiefly an inves- tigation into the conditions which precede the occurrence of the first fit. PREDISPOSING CAUSES. Sex.—The first etiological condition to be considered is the influence of sex. Females suffer from chronic con- vulsions rather more frequently than males. In the total