Q. Have you had any opportunities in your own experience of observing epilepsies?
A. I have. They are of two kinds, either primary or symptomatick. It happens sometimes that without the least previous notice, a man in the most perfect state of health, in the midst of pleasure or engaged in business, as Suetonius says of Julius Cæsar, may in a moment, be seized with the epilepsy, his senses will leave him, he will fall down, be convulsed, foam at the mouth, his tongue will be black, and he either may die or recover. As to the symptomatick epilepsy, I can speak from experience: a patient of mine had a violent pain and tumour in his finger; as soon as the pain, which gradually went up his arm, reached his arm-pit, he fell down epileptick, and convulsed. But if previous to an epilepsy, the patient heave very much at the stomach, and shew signs of sickness, I should conclude the cause of that epilepsy was in the stomach.
Q. Epilepsies proceed from various causes?
A. Numerous causes.
Q. Will not the loss of blood occasion an epilepsy?
A. I believe not.
Q. What quantity of blood was there in the stomach?
A. I did not measure it; I conclude about two pints; it lodged in the cavity of the thorax.
Q. Might not that occasion convulsions?
A. I do not know; but if I might be allowed to reason from analogy, I should conclude it would, for in all slaughtered animals, when the blood runs out from them in a full stream, they lie quiet, but they never die without convulsions. The loss of blood will evidently occasion convulsions.