CHAPTER XXIII
WORK AND PLAY
Although most people would assume that epileptics are unable to follow a trade, there is hardly an occupation from medicine to mining, from agriculture to acting, that does not include epileptics among its votaries.
Outdoor occupations involving but little mental work or responsibility are best, but unfortunately just those which promise excitement and change are those which appeal to the neuropath.
A light, clean, manual trade should be chosen, and those that mean work in stuffy factories, amid whirring wheels and harmful fumes, using dangerous tools, or climbing ladders, must be avoided.
For the fairly robust, gardening or farming are good occupations, such workers getting pure air, continuous exercise, and little brain-work. Wood-working trades are good, if dangerous tools like circular saws are left to others.
For the frail neuropath with a fair education, drawing, modelling, book-keeping, and similar semi-sedentary work may do. Other patients might be suited as shoemakers, stonemasons, painters, plumbers or domestic servants, so long as they always work on the ground.
Some work is essential; better an unsuitable occupation than none at all, for the downward tendency of the complaint is sufficiently marked without the victim becoming an idler. Work gives stability.
Epilepsy limits patients to a humble sphere, and
though this is hard to a man of talent, it is but one of many hard lessons, the hardest being to realize clearly his own limitations.