CHAPTER III
GENERAL REMARKS
"Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends;
I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing
To those that know me."
"Macbeth," Act III.
Starr's table shows that combinations of all types of epilepsy are possible, and that mental epilepsy is rare:
| Grand mal | 1150 |
| Grand and petit mal | 589 |
| Petit mal | 179 |
| Jacksonian | 37 |
| Mental | 16 |
| Grand mal and Jacksonian | 10 |
| Grand mal, petit mal and Jacksonian | 8 |
| Grand mal and mental | 3 |
| Grand mal, petit mal and mental | 6 |
| Petit mal and mental | 2 |
| Fits by day only | 660 |
| Fits day and night | 880 |
| Fits by night only | 380 |
The majority of victims have attacks both by day and by night. Of 115,000 seizures tabulated by Clark, 55,000 occurred during the day (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and 60,000 by night.
The usual course of a case of epilepsy is somewhat as follows: the disease begins in childhood, the first convulsion, about the age of three, being followed some twelve months later by a second, and this again by a third within a few months. Then attacks occur more frequently until a regular periodicity—from one a day to one a year—is reached after about five years, and this frequently persists throughout life.