Bewilder'd with the monstrous agony
He hath indured, and, wildly staring, sighs:
..."
In a few hours he wakes, with headache and mental confusion, not knowing he has been ill until told, and having no recollection of events just preceding the seizure, until reminded of them when they are slowly, and with painful effort, brought to mind. He is exhausted, and often vomits. In severe cases he may be deaf, dumb, blind, or paralysed for some hours, while purple spots (the result of internal hemorrhage) may appear on the head and neck. Victims often pass large quantities of colourless urine after an attack, and, as a rule, are quite well again within twenty-four hours.
This is the usual type, but seizures vary in different patients, and in the same sufferer at different times. The cry and the biting of the tongue may be absent, the first spasm brief, and the convulsions mild. Epilepsy of all kinds is characterized by an alteration (not necessarily a loss) of consciousness, followed by loss of memory for events that occurred during the time that alteration of consciousness lasted.
Attacks may occur by day only, by day and by night, or by night only, though in so-called nocturnal epilepsy, it is sleep and not night that induces the fit, for night-workers have fits when they go to sleep during the day.
Victims of nocturnal epilepsy may not be awakened by the seizure, but pass into deeper sleep. Intermittent wetting of the bed, occasional temporary mental stupor in the morning, irritability, temporary but well-marked lapses of memory, sleep-walking, and causeless outbursts of ungovernable temper all suggest nocturnal epilepsy.
Such a victim awakes confused, but imputes his mental sluggishness to a hearty supper or "a bad night". A swollen tongue, blood-stained pillow, and urinated bed arouse suspicion as to the real cause, suspicion which is confirmed by a seizure during the day. He is more fortunate (if such a term can rightly be used of any sufferer from this malady) than his fellow victim whose attacks occur during the day, often under circumstances which, to a sensitive nature, are very mortifying.
Epileptic attacks are of every degree of violence, varying from a moment's unconsciousness, from which the patient recovers so quickly that he cannot be convinced he has been ill, to that awful state which terrifies every beholder, and seems to menace the hapless victim with instant death. Every degree of frequency, too, is known, from one attack in a lifetime, down through one in a year, a month, a week, or a day; several in the same periods, to hundreds in four-and-twenty hours.