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

  • William Richard Gowers
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.

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    Whereas, in the cases in which the disease was inherited from the mother's side, females were in excess hj about 16 per cent. (98 to 71). Thus the percenta.ge of the males affected is 20 per cent, greater when the disease is inheri- ted from the father's than when from the mother's side. The affection of brothers or sisters must be regarded as an indication of an inherited taint, although we may be unable to trace antecedent instances. In these cases, 89 in number, the females are in very large excess—53 females to 36 males; but the total number is probably too small to permit safe generalisation. We may now see, in part at least, why females pre- ponderate so much more in the cases of inherited disease than when there is no inheritance. First, the inheritance is more frequency from the mother's side than from the father's; and, secondly, when the inheritance is from the mother's side, girls suffer in a much larger proportion than boys. Of the relatives who suffer, the mother is herself diseased in a much smaller proportion of cases than the father. The father himself was the subject of neurotic disease in 45 per cent, of the cases in which the inheritance was paternal; the mother, in only 35 per cent, of the cases in which the inheritance was maternal. Of the neurotic diseases which can be traced in the antecedents of epileptics, epilepsy is incomparably the most frequent. A history of epilepsy was obtained in nearly three-quarters of the inherited cases. In rather more than half (240) it existed alone; in 54 it was com- bined with insanity, in 5 cases with chorea, and in H with both insanity and chorea. Insanity occurred in the relatives of about one-third (157) of the inherited cases, and of these it existed alone in two-thirds. Chorea occurred in other relatives in 35 cases, in 24 of which it existed alone; in 5 it was associated with epilepsy, and in 3 with insanity. The forms of paralysis, paraplegia and infantile palsy, included in the investigation, were not more frequent in the families with other evidence of