Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. II

by Erasmus Darwin

When epilepsy first commences, the patients are liable to utter one scream before they fall down; afterwards the convulsions so immediately follow the pain, which occasions them, that the patient does not recollect or seem sensible of the preceding pain. Thus in laughter, when it is not excessive, a person is not conscious of the pain, which so often recurs, and causes the successive screams or exertions of laughter, which give a temporary relief to it.

Epileptic fits frequently recur in sleep from the increase of sensibility at that time, explained in Sect. XVIII. 14. In two such cases, 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, as in common epilepsy, without removing the cause; and, as the parturition is not thus promoted, the convulsions continue, till the sensorial power is totally exhausted, that is, till death. In patients afflicted with epilepsy from other causes, I have seen the most violent convulsions recur frequently during pregnancy without miscarriage, as they did not tend to forward the exclusion of the fetus.

M. M. Venesection. A large dose of opium. Delivery.

The later in life epileptic fits are first experienced, the more dangerous they may be esteemed in general; as in these cases the cause has generally been acquired by the habits of the patient, or by the decay of some part, and is thus probably in an increasing state. Whereas in children the changes in the system, as they advance to puberty, sometimes removes the cause. So in toothing, fits of convulsion with stupor frequently occur, and cease when the tooth advances; but this is not to be expected in advanced life. Sir ——, about sixty years of age, had only three teeth left in his upper jaw, a canine tooth, and one on each side of it. He was seized with epileptic fits, with pain commencing in these teeth. He was urged to have them extracted, which he delayed too long, till the fits were become habitual, and then had them extracted in vain, and in a few months sunk under the disease.

Mr. F——, who had lived intemperately, and had been occasionally affected with the gout, was suddenly seized with epileptic fits; the convulsions were succeeded by apoplectic snoring; from which he was, in about 20 minutes, disturbed by fresh convulsions, and had continued in this situation above four-and-twenty hours. About eight ounces of blood were then taken from him; and after having observed, that the apoplectic's torpor continued about 20 minutes, I directed him to be forcibly raised up in bed, after he had thus lain about fifteen minutes, to gain an interval between the termination of the sleep, and the renovation of convulsion. In this interval he was induced to swallow forty drops of laudanum. Twenty more were given him in the same manner in about half an hour, both which evidently shortened the convulsion fits, and the consequent stupor; he then took thirty more drops, which for the present removed the fits. He became rather insane the next day, and after about three more days lost the insanity, and recovered his usual state of health.

The case mentioned in Sect. XXVII. 2. where the patient was left after epileptic fits with a suffusion of blood beneath the tunica adjunctiva of the eye, was in almost every respect similar to the preceding, and submitted to the same treatment. Both of them suffered frequent relapses, which were relieved by the same means, and at length perished, I believe, by the epileptic fits.