The causes, if they can be determined, should be removed, and those remedies administered which relieve nervous irritability and cerebral congestion. If due to worms, the proper remedies should be given; if to phimosis, the subject should be circumcised; if to pressure on the brain, from fracture of the skull, trephining should be practiced, and the depressed bone raised. There are no specifics for this disease; each individual case must be treated according to the condition presented. The nostrums advertised extensively over the country as specifics for this disease, while they may, in some instances, prevent the attacks for a short time, irritate the stomach, impair digestion, lower vitality, and permanently injure the system, often rendering the disease incurable. They deceive the sufferer, leading him to think that his disease is being cured, until it progresses so far that he is beyond the reach of any treatment. As a rule, the longer the disease progresses, the more difficult it is to cure.
Epilepsy has by many physicians been regarded as incurable, but our extensive experience has convinced us that by an appropriate course of treatment, the vast majority of cases can be cured. The animal extracts, or juices, herein more fully described under the head of treatment for Nervous Exhaustion, have proven curative in some cases that have resisted other remedies. This treatment requires the personal attention of a physician skilled in its employment. It is also of first importance that the extracts be properly made. We have discovered several new remedies, which undoubtedly exert a powerful curative influence over this disease, but it is necessary to vary the treatment so much in different cases, that it would be useless to enter further into details in this treatise.
Surgical Treatment. A considerable proportion of those cases of epilepsy, termed Jacksonian, have been found to be caused by new growth upon, or in, the substance of the brain. Sometimes cysts form as a result of small hemorrhages, or of spots of softening from clots in the cerebral arteries. Other cases are due to a small spot of hardened tissue or an inflamed centre of irritation in the outer gray matter of the brain.
The majority of these forms of disease can be exactly localized in a small area of the brain, and may usually be traced to a blow or fall on the head, or to fracture of the skull without depression. The discovery of the fact that such results of injury will produce localized spasm has naturally lead to the conclusion that similar products anywhere in the brain may give rise to epilepsy. In these cases trephining of the skull and the removal of irritation from the brain has been followed by the most successful results. It is seldom a serious or dangerous operation, but very few deaths having resulted in the practice of good surgeons in many hundreds of cases, and these were individuals who were not favorable for operation, and in whom it was undertaken as a last resort.
In these cases of epilepsy, due to injury, the operation is fairly safe, and in carefully selected cases that have not been allowed to run so long as to bring upon the brain a general epileptic tendency, the results of operation are good and the procedure warrantable.
See Testimonials from a few of the many cures effected by our Specialists.
CHOREA (ST. VITUS'S DANCE).
This disease is an affection of the nervous system, which is characterized by spasmodic contractions of certain muscles. It may affect the entire body, although it is usually confined to the left side, or to a special group of muscles.
Symptoms. Twitchings of the muscles of the face are the most conspicuous symptoms. They are at first comparatively slight, but as the disease progresses, these spasms become more decided, and the face is twisted into various shapes and forms. The head, in some cases, is constantly jerking. It is with great difficulty that the tongue is thrust out of the mouth, and then, with a sudden jerk, it is quickly withdrawn.