"Epileptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard his scream—the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her—the scream of the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether the fit had come on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so that he must have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a woman doctor—the pride of the whole family and "a saint" as the peasants call her—really is remarkable. She has a tumour on the brain, and in consequence of it she is totally blind, has epileptic fits and constant headaches. She knows what awaits her, and stoically with amazing coolness speaks of her approaching death. In the course of my medical practice I have grown used to seeing people who were soon going to die, and I have always felt strange when people whose death was at ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... country, and we can well afford to insist upon adequate scrutiny of the character of those who are thus proposed for future citizenship. There should be an increase in the stringency of the laws to keep out insane, idiotic, epileptic, and pauper immigrants. But this is by no means enough. Not merely the Anarchist, but every man of Anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly people, all people of bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Numbers of Mental Defectives: Education Department Returns; Retardation, Problem of; Feeble-minded and Epileptic Cases, Return showing 12 ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... account, the women did not bathe the new-born children with water, as is the custom in all other countries, but with wine, to prove the temper and complexion of their bodies; from a notion they had that epileptic and weakly children faint and waste away upon their being thus bathed, while, on the contrary, those of a strong and vigorous habit acquire firmness and get a temper by it like steel. There was much care and art, too, used by the nurses; they ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... contemplate the pomp and majesty of his world-wide fame, we are also admitted to the sordid circumstances of Goethe's "home." And our awe and reverence are turned into pity. We pity the miserable husband of a drunken and epileptic wife rescued from the gutter; we pity even more the unhappy father of a degraded son, who inherited all the vices of one parent without inheriting the genius of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... acts performed on children appear as symptoms of moral and intellectual degeneration. In this connexion may be mentioned, congenital imbecility, progressive paralysis (paralytic dementia), senile dementia, chronic alcoholism, cerebral syphilis, and post-epileptic dementia; with or without these conditions, epileptic disturbances of consciousness may lead to ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... against dizziness, apoplexy, and the falling sickness; and not only the flowers, but the distilled water thereof." [318] Hoffman knew a case of chronic epilepsy recovered by a use of the flowers in infusion drunk as tea. Such, indeed, was the former exalted anti-epileptic reputation of the Lime Tree, that epileptic persons sitting under its shade were reported to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... fool," he said, "didn't I call to you not to be alarmed? Mr. Silk, here, has been seized with a—a kind of epileptic fit. Help him downstairs and call a chair for him. Don't stare; he will not bite again for a very ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... gentry were required to pay as much for admission to the gallery at the far end of the building as did the nabobs in the parquet. Joe Rolette, the member from "Pembina" county, occasionally entertained the audience at this theater by having epileptic fits, but Joe's friends always promptly removed him from the building and the performance ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... 9th of May, 1865, that Hamilton was in Dublin for the last time. A few days later he had a violent attack of gout, and on the 4th of June he became alarmingly ill, and on the next day had an attack of epileptic convulsions. However, he slightly rallied, so that before the end of the month he was again at work at the "Elements." A gratifying incident brightened some of the last days of his life. The National ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... from the influence of some severe mental shock received by the mother during her pregnancy. This subject of maternal impressions will come up for separate consideration in the discussion of pregnancy. Again, a child may be epileptic, although there is no epilepsy in the family, simply because of the intoxication of the father or mother at the time of the intercourse resulting in conception. Such cases are not due to hereditary transmission, for that cannot be hereditary ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the common soldier at this stage of the war would have thrown an ordinary quartermaster of latter day service into an epileptic fit, it was so ponderous in size and enormous in quantities—a perfect household outfit. A few days before this the soldier had received his first two months' pay, all in new crisp bank notes, fresh from the State banks or banks of deposit. It can be ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... distant operation of certain bodies; at least, they seem strange to those unacquainted with psychometry and the literature of the past century relating to this subject. Two physicians in Rochefort, Professors Bourru and Burot, in treating a hystero-epileptic person, found that gold, even when at a distance of fifteen centimeters, produced in him a feeling of unbearable heat. They continued these experiments with great care, and, after a number of trials, came to this conclusion—that in some persons certain substances, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... remain free, he furiously lashes the neck of the victim. While the blows fall thick as hail, in front and behind, the head and corselet of the amorous swain are shaken by an extravagant swaying and trembling. You would think that the creature was having an epileptic fit. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of this extraordinary creature became convulsed, and she fell to the ground foaming in an epileptic fit, and was carried ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Willis's career afford a melancholy contrast to its brilliant opening. Health, success, prosperity—all had deserted him, and nothing remained but the editorial chair, to which he clung even after epileptic attacks had resulted in paralysis and gradual softening of the brain. The failure of his mental powers was kept secret as long as possible, but in November, 1866, he yielded to the entreaties of his wife ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... [Footnote: "Lord Master, medicine, medicine."] I did my best; I attended at any hour of the day those who would benefit from a few doses of medicine. But this did not satisfy the great majority, composed of old syphilitic cases, nor the leper, nor those suffering from elephantiasis, the epileptic, the scrofulous, or those who had been mutilated at the hands of the cruel Gallas. Day after day the crowd of patients increased; those who had met with refusal remained in the hope that on another day the "Hakeem's" boxes of unheard-of medicine might be opened, for them also. New ones daily poured ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... of epilepsy in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by an injury to ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... I shouldn't have thought that you'd have—" but she dropped this line to take up another. "Yes, he's always been so. When he was a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and though he never was as bad as that he's always needed to be taken care of. He can do very wild and foolish things as—as ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... was a lunatic. It was said that he had gravely sinned, and was under the Lord's displeasure; prayers were abundantly offered up that he might be led back into the pathway of light, and that the Smiling Face might be drawn forth for him from behind the Frowning Providence. When the man had an epileptic seizure in the High Street, he was not taken to a hospital, but we repeated to one another, with shaken heads, that Satan, that crooked Serpent, had been unloosed for a season. Mr. Paget was fond of talking, in private and in public, of his dreadful spiritual condition ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the peace of the epileptic or the mad. No, no, joy and health do not lie that way. If I were the scientist merely, I would say, 'Keep on, and I will stand by to observe your struggles.' But I am not, I am something else than scientist. It angers and agonizes me to see you tortured. I cannot endure it and I will not. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... making no active demonstration whatever. This went on for about six weeks, and attracted a good deal of curiosity in the neighborhood. At length, in the latter part of February, Archibald had a sort of fit, apparently of an epileptic nature. On recovering from it, he called for a glass of milk, and drank it with avidity; he then fell asleep, and did not ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... on my shadow, and cursed profoundly, while his passion was mastering him. I noted with interest in that uncomfortable moment the clear signs of his epileptic tendencies, the twitching of the thumb that grasped the stick, the rigidity of the body, the curious working of certain facial muscles. I stood perfectly still, though my right hand involuntarily sought the pocket of my coat where ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... of them aiming toward her heart, she appeared to wake up. She shrieked, her eyes abnormally dilated by the horror of the reality that so soon was to take place. Her cheeks were covered with tears. She tugged at the ligatures with the vigor of an epileptic. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... hangs yonder. But I never cared for this picture; it was too complicated and ingenious—it needed too much co-operation from the observer's mind. Besides, I had never seen a boy with anything approaching the muscular development of the epileptic youth in the centre. The thing in the picture that I most approved of was the end of the log in the little pool, in the foreground; it ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... got from an old colored man who used to work for my father years ago. Queer how such things stick to one, isn't it? But I don't just know how to describe what Burton told me about his daughter in any other way. She wasn't an epileptic. That's a thing one goes down under; and her case was just the reverse. She was, as a rule, propped up in a chair, as weak as a kitten; but when these things took her, she grew immensely strong and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... often produced by changing from a horizontal to a vertical position, seasickness, pain in movement in cases of meningitis, epileptic attacks at night, etc., may be by this explained. These views of Luys are accepted as true, but to a less extent than taught by Luys. The prevalent idea that a lesion of one hemisphere produces a paralysis upon the opposite side of the body alone is no longer tenable, for each hemisphere ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... the tomb of his friend, whom he believed to be dead,[3] might be taken by those present for the agitation and trembling[4] which accompanied miracles. Popular opinion required that the divine virtue should manifest itself in man as an epileptic and convulsive principle. Jesus (if we follow the above hypothesis) desired to see once more him whom he had loved; and, the stone being removed, Lazarus came forth in his bandages, his head covered with a winding-sheet. This reappearance ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... shout of laughter, but slowly Margot Poins fell across the Queen's knees. She uttered no sound, but lay there motionless. The sight affected Udal to an epileptic fury. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... Romanus was instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of Michael the Fourth. The expectations of Zoe were, however, disappointed: instead of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had placed in her bed a miserable wretch, whose health and reason were impaired by epileptic fits, and whose conscience was tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful physicians of the mind and body were summoned to his aid; and his hopes were amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of the most popular saints; the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... his only chance of health lay in complete rest during the holiday, this plan of spending the summer in study was simply a death sentence. In July, while at work on logarithm tables, he was overtaken by a sudden fainting fit, evidently of an epileptic nature. The malady gained strength, aided by the weakness of his heart and lungs, and he died on ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... moment, Verkan Vall was afraid the fellow would have an apoplectic stroke, or an epileptic fit. Mastering himself, however, ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... smooth every passion That in the natures of their lords rebel; Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods; Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters, Knowing naught, like dogs, but following.— A plague upon your epileptic visage! Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool? Goose, an I had you upon Sarum plain, I'd drive ye cackling ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of her life, and the misery which she had brought on all who belonged to her. Then at last she gave way, fell into tears, hysteric sobbings, convulsions so violent as for a time to take the appearance of epileptic fits, and was at last exhausted ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... might over all foul spirits (for the 'us' means not the man and the demon, but the demon and his fellows); and the recognition of Christ's holiness, which lashes unholiness into a paroxysm of mingled despair and hate. Does this sound like a madman, or an epileptic, or like a spirit which knew more than men knew, and trembled and hated more than they could do? There is nothing more terrible than the picture, self-drawn in these spasmodic words, of a spirit which, by its very foulness, is made ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... were two invalids to be seen to. Young Szephalmi was able indeed to go about, but he was like a worm-eaten plant, there seemed to be but little life within him. Old Hetfalusy, on the other hand, had altogether succumbed to his woe, he had taken to his bed, and was frequently tormented by epileptic fits. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... his Treatise on nervous disorders, does not hesitate to recommend amulets in epileptic disorders. "Take," says he, "some fresh peony roots, cut them into square bits, and hang them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry." It is not improbable that the hint was taken from this circumstance for the anodyne necklaces, which, some time ago, were in such ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... he observes, of which I shall only say that they are by their nature plainly, like the last, meant as preservatives against unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible. He assists every month with his children at the mysteries of the Orphic priests; and finally, whenever he sees an epileptic patient, he spits in his own bosom ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... could no longer deny herself the pleasure of writing to her darling, though her finger was still so stiff that she wrote with great difficulty, as might be seen in the cramped and awkward letters, "all looking as if they had epileptic fits," she jestingly added. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... old—twenty! Attention! This is the overture. It begins with an andante in C major, triple time. Do you hear the sadness of the ambitious man who is not satisfied with love? Then, through his lamentation, by a transition to the key of E flat, allegro, common time, we hear the cries of the epileptic lover, his fury and certain warlike phrases, for the mighty charms of the one and only woman give him the impulse to multiplied loves which strikes us in Don Giovanni. Now, as you hear these themes, do you not catch ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... about a dozen yards from my house," answered Dr. Mirandolet, in a sharp, staccato voice. "A policeman was bending over him. Mr. Gardiner hurriedly told us what he had seen. My first thought was that the man was in what is commonly termed a fit—some form of epileptic seizure, you know. I hastily examined him—and found that my first impression ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... indeed, I have seldom thought of it at all, and nothing has occurred until now to recall it to my mind; but it is a fact of too serious importance to be overlooked at this crisis. Reflect now, that there is only one frail life between me and the heirship of my father's earldom—the life of my epileptic half-brother Francis, who, inheriting the malady of his beautiful young mother who perished in her youth, has declared that he will never marry ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... experience of epileptics. As a criminologist, I have given some study to the effect of epilepsy and other nervous diseases on the criminal temperament. For instance, this young man did not give the usual cry of an epileptic when he sprang up from the table. And if it is merely an attack of petit mal, why is he ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural, and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones, failed to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his fortune; he makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the wife of old Grigory, who had been knocked senseless near the fence, was sleeping soundly in her bed and might well have slept till morning after the draught she had taken. But, all of a sudden she waked up, no doubt roused by a fearful epileptic scream from Smerdyakov, who was lying in the next room unconscious. That scream always preceded his fits, and always terrified and upset Marfa Ignatyevna. She could never get accustomed to it. She jumped up and ran half-awake to Smerdyakov's room. But it was dark there, and she could only hear the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the country who had once gone wrong, and who is now trying to keep straight on five dollars a week made in the sewing-room of one of the city's hospitals. Bettie Flynn, who lives at the City Home because of epileptic fits, also comes in occasionally. Bettie is a friend of Mrs. Mundy. Owing to kinlessness and inability to care for herself, owing, also, to there being nowhere else to which she could go, she has been forced to enter the Home. Her caustic comments on its ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... a bad attack of epileptic fits for a moment, till it transpired that he had flumped down on a dead Boche in endeavouring to escape the searching glare of the flare. After the thing had burnt its giddy self out Tommy crawled crab-fashion ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... great demonstration of the old belief in England was made in 1788. Near the city of Bristol at that time lived a drunken epileptic, George Lukins. In asking alms, he insisted that he was "possessed," and proved it by jumping, screaming, barking, and treating the company to a parody ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Epilepsy.—1. Apoplexy mostly happens in people over thirty, whereas epilepsy generally occurs under that ago; at any rate for the first time. A person who has epileptic fits over thirty, has generally suffered from them for some years. 2. Again, in apoplexy, the body is paralyzed; and, therefore, has not the convulsions which take place in epilepsy. 3. The peculiar snoring will also distinguish ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... first public men to see Napoleon after his return from Waterloo was Lavallette. "I flew," says he, "to the Elysee to see the Emperor: he summoned me into his closet, and as soon as he saw me, he came to meet me with a frightful epileptic 'laugh. 'Oh, my God!' he said, raising his eyes to heaven, and walking two or three times up and down the room. This appearance of despair was however very short. He soon recovered his coolness, and asked me what was going ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... brothers—Ivan, a brother by the same mother, Eudocia, and Peter, the son of the second wife of Alexis. Ivan was very feeble in body and in mind, with dim vision, and subject to epileptic fits. Feodor consequently declared his younger brother Peter, who was but ten years of age, his successor. The custom of the empire allowed him to do this, and rendered this appointment valid. It was generally the doom of the daughters of the Russian ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops. Her father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter from England to the Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country." There he found a congregation, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... I was possessed of a Jinn, the common Eastern explanation of an epileptic fit long before the days of the Evangel. See ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... emotional state of misery similar to that experienced at the same time of day during an illness some years previously. Or, passing the house of a doctor when on a bus could produce a sudden outburst of anxiety, giddiness, and confusion; the patient had been taken into that house at the time of an epileptic attack. Or, showing photographs of the front could lead to an epileptic attack which was based on the memory of the time when the patient was wounded in the head; this has occurred on two separate occasions separated by an interval of some months. Or, noticing a familiar ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... veneni. Enviable enviinda. Envious enviema. Environs cxirkauxajxo. Envoy sendito. Envy envii. Epaulet epoleto. Ephemeral mallonga, efemera. Epic epopea. Epic epopeo. Epicure epikuristo. Epidemic epidemio. Epidermis epidermo. Epigram epigramo. Epilepsy epilepsio. Epileptic epilepsia. Epileptic (person) epilepsiulo. Epilogue epilogo. Epiphany Epifanio. Episcopacy episkopeco. Episode epizodo. Epistle letero. Epistolary letera. Epitaph epitafo. Epithet epiteto. Epitome resumo. Epitomise mallongigi. Epoch epoko. Equable egala. Equal egala. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... speech, mental defect, imbecility or idiocy. When he found families in which such defective children occurred, he then inquired as to their ancestry. Many of these children, he found, were reduced to a condition approaching epilepsy, or actually epileptic, because they themselves were alcoholic. Obviously such material can not legitimately be used to prove that the use of alcohol by parents injures the heredity of their children. The figures do not at all give the proof we are seeking, that alcohol can so affect ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... children have been sent to their proper institutions. One of them is deaf, one an epileptic, and the other three approaching idiocy. None of them ought ever to have been accepted here. This as an educational institution, and we can't waste our valuable plant in caring ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... organ affected on the same side, the chances against mere coincidence are enormous. But perhaps the most remarkable and trustworthy fact is that given by Dr. Brown-Sequard,[63] namely, that many young guinea-pigs inherited an epileptic tendency from parents which had been subjected to a particular operation, inducing in the course of a few weeks a convulsive disease like epilepsy: and it should be especially noted that this eminent physiologist bred a large number of guinea-pigs from animals ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... at this very wine party he was the life of everything, as he sat up there between Diogenes—whom he kept in a constant sort of mild epileptic fit, from laughter, and wine going the wrong way (for whenever Diogenes raised his glass Blake shot him with some joke)—and the Captain who watched him with the most undisguised admiration. A singular contrast, the two men! Miller, though Blake was the torment ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... frequently drawn from the sitters as well as from the medium, and the eventual effect on the latter is invariably evil, as is evinced by the large number of such sensitives who have gone either morally or psychically to the bad—some becoming epileptic, some taking to drink, others falling under influences which induced them to stoop to fraud and trickery of ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... them; and the obstinate silence of the criminal gave no clue. Monsieur de Grandville tried the common means of holding out hopes of commutation of the sentence in case of confession; but when he went to see the prisoner and suggest it the latter received him with such furious cries and epileptic contortions, such rage at being powerless to take him by the throat, that he ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... laid open the entire flank, the knotted viscera were drawn into great hard lumps beneath the tight-drawn skin, while as the effect of certain wounds the patient frothed at the mouth and writhed like an epileptic. Here and there were cases where the lungs had been penetrated, the puncture now so minute as to permit no escape of blood, again a wide, deep orifice through which the red tide of life escaped in torrents; and the internal hemorrhages, those that were hid from sight, were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... enacting that women should no longer be excepted in the laws against tramps and vagrants. Constitutional amendments proposing women's suffrage were defeated this year (1895) in no less than nine States. Connecticut passed a law that no man or woman should marry who was epileptic or imbecile, if the wife be under forty-five, and another State for the first time awards divorce to the husband for cruelty or indignities suffered at the hands of the wife, while another State still repeals altogether its law permitting divorces for cruelty or intoxication. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... son of Abdallah and Aminah (usually known as Mohammed, or "he who will be praised,"); reads like a chapter in the "Thousand and One Nights." He was a camel-driver, born in Mecca. He seems to have been an epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him all over Arabia and he ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... by the torrent, Hilda had seen a well-dressed epileptic youth, in charge of an elderly woman, approaching the station. He had passed slowly close by her, as she modestly waited in her hasty mourning, and she had had a fearful vision of his idiotic greenish face supported somehow like a mask at the summit of that shaky ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... archbishop and bishop deported to the Antarctic regions civil war would break out in a week. All records were broken by the Liberal Party, who rose as one man and cheered Mr. Tooth's declaration for ten minutes, many Members standing on their heads and waving their legs with epileptic fervour. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... my head Begins irascibly to flare and fret, Wheezing into its epileptic jet, Reminding me I ought ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... younger brother to set out at once for some quiet place in the White Mountains, where I hoped to steady my shattered nerves. At this time I felt as though in a tremor from head to foot, and the thought that I was about to have an epileptic attack constantly recurred. On more than one occasion I said to friends that I would rather die than live an epileptic; yet, if I rightly remember, I never declared the actual fear that I was doomed to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... fell across the threshold; but, alas, there were every now and then padded rooms opening out of the passage; and as this was not a refractory ward, I asked the meaning of the arrangement, which I had fancied was an obsolete one. I was told they were for epileptic patients. In virtue of his official position as bandmaster, Herr Kuester had a key; and, after walking serenely into a passage precisely like the rest, informed me, with the utmost coolness, that I was in the refractory ward. I looked around for the stalwart attendant, who is generally to be ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Thomas, and presently making another trip to Cape Francais, was surprised to hear from his consignee that Telemaque would be returned on his hands as being "unsound,"—not in theology nor in morals, but in body,—subject to epileptic fits, in fact. According to the custom of that place, the boy was examined by the city physician, who required Captain Vesey to take him back; and Denmark served him faithfully, with no trouble from epilepsy, for twenty years, travelling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, engaged in by a person who, at the time of observation, cannot definitely be declared insane, feebleminded, or epileptic. Such lying rarely, if ever, centers about a single event; although exhibited in very occasional cases for a short time, it manifests itself most frequently by far over a period of years, or even a life ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... shaved. His hair was short and naturally scanty, falling off toward the end of his life and leaving him partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high and shrill. His health was uniformly strong until his last year, when he became subject to epileptic fits. He was a great bather, and scrupulously clean in all his habits, abstemious in his food, and careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and noting sobriety as the highest of qualities when describing any new people. He was an athlete ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... his eyes, covered them, turned away gasping. It couldn't be watched. An epileptic in a seizure can break the bones in a leg or arm by simultaneous contraction of opposing muscles. When all the opposed muscles of Hengly's body did this the results ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... suppose I did? My boy, I took the governor's old house, that was unlet—the very house that he kept up at five thousand a year. Off I started in rare style, and sank my last cent in furniture. But it's no use, laddie. I can't hold on any longer. I got two accidents and an epileptic—twenty-two pounds, eight and sixpence—that's ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the case of an old epileptic who had been accustomed to take nitrate of silver as a remedy, the choroid plexuses were remarkably dark, and from their surface could be scraped a brownish black, soot-like material, and a similar substance was found lying ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... wayfarers, and in such a case the traveller was never seen again alive. Tales of Robin Hood began to take shape. The by-ways and thickets were peopled with men, innocent or guilty, but all alike desperate. One Richard, we read, whose fellow at the plough fell dead in an epileptic fit, fled in terror of the judges to the woods, and so did many a worse man than Richard. We find constantly the same tale of the sudden quarrel, the blow with a stick or a stone, the thrust with the knife which every ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon sink into the village church sward. Why, our time seems coming. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... young man suffering from curvature of the spine. He had been attending the clinic for four months and practising the method at home. His doctor assured him that the spine was gradually resuming its normal position. A girl of twenty-two had suffered from childhood with epileptic fits, recurring at intervals of a few weeks. Since her first visit to the clinic six months previously the ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... of epileptic tendencies—as McPherson himself admits—had taken his benefactor's death terribly to heart, and had brooded over it day and night. Is there any reason to doubt that in such an unbalanced nature, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... it said that a child that was conceived when the father was in an exhilarated condition is apt to be epileptic, or nervous, or insane, and what not. This is also to be taken with a grain of salt. A chronic alcoholic has a defective germ-plasm, and his children are apt to be defective. But a glass of wine at a wedding banquet cannot affect the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... "thing" has a different meaning for the naive person and the sophisticated person, for the child and the philosopher; the new experience derives its significance from the character and organization of the previous experiences. To the peasant a comet, a plague, and an epileptic person may mean a divine portent, a visitation of God, a possession by the devil; to the scientific man they mean something quite different. The word "slavery" had very different connotations in the ancient world and today. It has a very ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... core that gives the point and the splendid audacity to French literature and art,—its vehemence and impatience of restraint. It is the salt of their speech, the nitre of their wit. When morbid, it gives that rabid and epileptic tendency which sometimes shows itself in Victor Hugo. In this great writer, however, it more frequently takes the form of an aboriginal fierceness and hunger that glares and bristles, and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... rage, when it dawned on him that the rump of an officer and nobleman had been bust in by the hobnailed socks of a poor private! He went off chattering like a woman and wriggling like an epileptic—" ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... to write another letter to Herr Sesemann, stating that these unaccountable things that were going on in the house had so affected his daughter's delicate constitution that the worst consequences might be expected. Epileptic fits and St. Vitus's dance often came on suddenly in cases like this, and Clara was liable to be attacked by either if the cause of the general alarm was ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... little girl has been suffering from epileptic crises. Several doctors had told me that about the age of 14 or 15 they would disappear or become worse. Having heard of you, I sent her to you from the end of December till May. Now her cure is complete, for during six months she ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... in this matter the State has already recognised its public obligation to provide remedial aid in its provision for the education and lodging of the blind, the deaf and the dumb, and in the measures taken within recent years for the special education of the defective and the epileptic. The provision for these purposes may indeed be justified on the grounds that the expense of the education of children of the industrial classes so afflicted is beyond the powers of any one individual, or group of individuals, to supply, and that unless undertaken by ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... hardly a difficulty, because the predisposition to disease is a congenital, not an acquired character, and as such would be the subject of inheritance. The often-quoted case of a disease induced by mutilation being inherited (Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs) has been discussed by Professor Weismann, and shown to be not conclusive. The mutilation itself—a section of certain nerves—was never inherited, but the resulting epilepsy, or a general state of weakness, deformity, or sores, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... either their own misery or at the sight of the misery of others, we would no more award the death penalty if the motive has been exclusively political, because they are much less dangerous than the criminal born. On the other hand, commitment to the asylum of the epileptic and the hysteric would be a practical measure, especially in France, where ridicule kills them. Martyrs are venerated and fools ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... epilepsy: "Because there are many children and others afflicted with the epilepsy, who cannot take medicines, let the following experiment be tried, which I have found to be effectual, whether the patient was a demoniac, a lunatic, or an epileptic. When the patient and his parents have fasted three days, let them conduct him to church. If he be of a proper age, and of his right senses, let him confess. Then let him hear Mass on Friday, and ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... deadly pale and go into convulsions; and this occurred as often as the two were left alone. The prince complained of his hard lot, and sought medical advice. It was reported that the young wife was subject to epileptic attacks. A man of any delicacy would have accepted the situation and held his peace; but the prince took counsel of his factotum, a certain ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... his leg Waiting until the shriek subsides. The epileptic on the bed Curves backward, ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... sorry to say, had a good deal of trouble with some of our men here. One disappeared directly we arrived, and has never been seen since. Another came off suffering from delirium tremens and epileptic fits, brought on by drink. His cries and struggles were horrible to hear and witness. It took four strong men to hold him, and the doctor was up with him all last night. Nearly all the ships that come here have been at sea for a long time, and the men are simply wild when they get ashore. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... important question is as to those vicious habits in which there is no love to sin, but only a dread and recoiling from intolerable pain, as in the case of the miserable drunkard! I trust that these epileptic agonies are rather the punishments than the augumenters of his guilt. The annihilation of the wicked is a fearful thought, yet it would solve many difficulties both in natural religion and in Scripture. And Taylor in his Arminian dread of Calvinism is always too shy of this "grace of God:" ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... back to Europe as soon as possible, and consign her to her mother, who lives in Paris. She should be placed in the care of a physician and under guardianship. She has been trained to do a certain dance, during which she falls into a pathologic condition not unlike an epileptic fit. She turns stiff and rigid as a block of wood, her eyes start from her head, she plucks at her clothes. Finally, she falls into a faint and loses consciousness of her surroundings. Such things do not belong on the stage. It would be an outrage, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... his male friends, was capricious. His temper was often sullen, and when in one of his gloomy moods he would spend the whole evening in his farm kitchen in morose silence. This state of mind was in part due to physical infirmity. As a child he had been subject to epileptic fits, and though these grew less frequent as he advanced to manhood, he never entirely shook them off, and during his married life a long spell of gloomy misanthropy would sometimes end in the return of one of these attacks. He was, too, a proud man, and his pride bred in him a morbid ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... Telemaque availed himself of this law to redeliver him to Captain Vesey on his return voyage to Sto. Domingo. For the royal physician of the town had meanwhile certified that the lad was subject to epileptic fits. The act of sale was thereupon cancelled, and the old relations of master and slave between Captain Vesey and Telemaque, were resumed. Thus, without design, perhaps, however passionately he might have desired it, the boy found ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept, shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid, frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois, insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save the girl's reason ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... peculiarities, beyond the famous experiments of Brown-Sequard, repeated and confirmed by other physiologists.[41] By cutting the spinal cord or the sciatic nerve of guinea-pigs, Brown-Sequard brought about an epileptic state which was transmitted to the descendants. Lesions of the same sciatic nerve, of the restiform body, etc., provoked various troubles in the guinea-pig which its progeny inherited sometimes ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... studying anatomy and physiology. Professor Barclay Thompson supplied him with a set of bones, and, having purchased the needful books, he set to work in good earnest. His mind was first turned to acquiring medical knowledge by his happening to be at hand when a man was seized with an epileptic fit. He had prevented the poor creature from falling, but was utterly at a loss what to do next. To be better prepared on any future occasion, he bought a little manual called "What to do in Emergencies." In later years he was constantly buying medical and surgical works, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... while it suggested various causes for this epileptic condition, negatives entirely any claim that these attacks were at all related to the illness which obliged this officer to abandon service with his regiment. He testified himself that he had been told he had one or two convulsions in childhood, but there is ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... the result being that an impediment arises in the aforesaid manner to the due action of man, it is said to be a sin of weakness. Hence the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 8) compares the incontinent man to an epileptic, whose limbs move in a manner ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... barouche with outriders, launched packets of tracts among the cottagers and tenants, and would order Gaffer Jones to be converted, as she would order Goody Hicks to take a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefit of clergy. My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic and simple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of approving of everything which his Matilda did and thought. So that whatever changes her own belief might undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigious variety of opinion, taken from all sorts of doctors among the Dissenters) ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strain, since there was in him a touch of the degenerate. His mother's father had published a humanitarian poem on cats. His great-uncle had written a peculiar novel. Young Alfred was nervous, delicate, slightly epileptic, and it is certain that he was given to dissipation, which so far had affected his health only by making him hysterical. He was an exceedingly handsome youth, with exquisite manners, "dreamy rather than dazzling eyes, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... have attracted the attention of medical men, and that literature should be replete with such instances. Pechlin and Muas record instances of painless births. The Ephemerides records a birth as having occurred during asphyxia, and also one during an epileptic attack. Storok also speaks of birth during unconsciousness in an epileptic attack; and Haen and others describe cases occurring during the coma attending apoplectic attacks. King reports the histories of two married women, fond mothers and anticipating the event, who gave birth to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... my death at last, I know. That man is too much for me; he is my mortal enemy, but he shall forthwith fall! I hate him—I hate him—I hate him!" and as he pronounced these words, he struck the arm of the chair in which he was sitting violently, over and over again, and then rose like one in an epileptic fit. "To-morrow! to-morrow! oh, happy day!" he murmured, "when the sun rises, no other rival shall that brilliant king of space possess but me. That man shall fall so low that when people look at the abject ruin my anger shall ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... an epileptic fit," said Monsieur Bargemont, coughing; he was catching cold standing ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also many children who have no aptitude for book learning, and many of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classroom procedure. Still more, they have brought into the school the crippled, tubercular, deaf, epileptic, and blind, as well as the sick, needy, and physically unfit. By steadily raising the age at which children may leave school, from ten or twelve up to fourteen and sixteen, schools everywhere have come to contain ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... too common in childhood, and as to which a few words apart are needed. Usually a child epileptic for some years will carry the disease with it for a time, the length of which no man can set. The disease may be such as to ruin mind and body, or the attacks may be rare, and not prevent courageous and resolute natures from leading ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... since this had come unto him and the father replied that it was since he was & child. And Jesus said unto him: "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth" (ver. 23). And then the father of the epileptic or demoniac uttered these pregnant and immortal words: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"—Pisteyo, kyrie, boethei te hapistia mou ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss ethnological points also. You see, I am verree small person here nowadays, in comparison with all his charms. By Jove, O'Hara, do you know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you. Cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. I found him in such a state under a tree in articulo mortem, and he jumped up and walked into a brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... and his friends stood before the king who had just recovered from an epileptic fit. A few hours earlier he would have killed Bartja with his own hands. Now he was ready to lend an ear to both sides. Boges first related that he was with the Achaemenidae, looking at the blue lily, and called Kandaules to inquire if everything was in order. On being told that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... so long and so persistently been prescribed as a cure for the falling sickness. As mistletoe cannot fall to the ground because it is rooted on the branch of a tree high above the earth, it seems to follow as a necessary consequence that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall down in a fit so long as he carries a piece of mistletoe in his pocket or a decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of reasoning would probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large portion of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... renowned novel in which the hunchbacked lover watches the execution of his mistress from the tower of Notre-Dame; and its strength passes gradually away into the anatomical preparations, for the general market, of novels like "Poor Miss Finch," in which the heroine is blind, the hero epileptic, and the obnoxious brother is found dead with his hands dropped off, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Burton went about their usual business, and were amused at seeing the terrified people rush off to the railway-station, and the queer garments in which they were clad. Shortly after Lady Burton was terribly frightened from another cause. Her husband had an epileptic fit, and it was some time before she and the doctors could bring him round again. Henceforth it became necessary for them to have always with them a resident doctor. They both of them disliked the idea ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... deadly habits a boy or young man can indulge in. It contracts the chest and weakens the lungs, thus predisposing to consumption. It impairs the stomach, thus producing indigestion. It debilitates the brain and nervous system, thus inducing epileptic fits and nervous depression. It stunts the growth, and is one cause of the present race of pigmies. It makes the young lazy and disinclined for work. It is one of the greatest curses of the present day. The following cases prove, more than ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... mad that minute. I once spent a night in the room of an epileptic who had delirium tremens, and learned a lot from him; some of it came to mind just when I needed it. If ever a man got ten piastres' worth of unexpected side-show it was that old Syrian with the alligator eyes. By the time I was quite out of breath there wasn't a cushion or a coffee-pot fit for ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... concerning the management and protective care of common emergencies. The instruction is practical and rational. It covers such emergencies as: sprains, fractures, dislocations, wounds, bruises, sudden pain, fainting, epileptic attacks, unconsciousness, drowning, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... is not uncommon, especially with epileptic patients. Every mad-doctor knows cases in which there are what may be described as alternating consciousnesses with alternating memories. But the experiments of the French hypnotists carry us much further. In their hands this ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... exemption; and if you were to attend a meeting where this affair is discussed, you would conclude the French to be more physically miserable than any people on the glove. Youths, in apparent good health, have internal disorders, or concealed infirmities—some are near-sighted—others epileptic—one is nervous, and cannot present a musquet—another is rheumatic, and cannot carry it. In short, according to their account, they are a collection of the lame, the halt, and the blind, and fitter to send to the hospital, than to take the field. But, in spite ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in charge of Prof. Westfahl, which was lately carried on by Dr. T. Galle (Uber die Beziehunger des Alcoholismus zur Epilepsie. Inaug. Dissert. 1881, Berlin), showed that among 607 patients who had entered the ward as epileptics or epileptic insane, 150 24.7 per cent. had been addicted to drink; 133 before, and 17 after the disease had shown itself; further, that of 1572 patients with delirium tremens, alcoholism, alcoholic dementia, and ebrietas, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... with an impotent scream, and the man Pietro caught her in his arms. Quivering and convulsed, she writhed in an epileptic fit. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... seaman's trick of thinking of the weather first thing in the morning, and this little thing wrought a change in my view of him. His madness was seemingly like that of an epileptic, and when it passed he was a simple creature with a longing for ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... by Jesus at the grave of the friend whom he believed to be dead (John xi. 33, 38) might be taken by those present for the agitation and tremors which were wont to accompany miracles. According to popular belief, divine power in a man was like an epileptic and convulsive element. Continuing the above hypothesis, Jesus wished to see once more the man he had loved, and the stone having been rolled away, Lazarus came forth in his grave-clothes, his head bound with a napkin. This apparition naturally was looked upon by every one as a resurrection. ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... crescent on the court were occupied by lady-boarders not suffering from mental alienation or any loss of faculty, but from decayed fortunes. The deaf and dumb, the blind, the crippled, epileptic, and insane had separate dwellings built apart in the formal luxuriant gardens. "We have patients of all nations," said the sister. "Strangers see none of these; there have been distressing recognitions." ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... shortly after, met again at Bologna. Francis going to Bologna, met a woman whose son was epileptic, and who came to beg the aid of his prayers. He wrote on a slip of paper some short but very devout ejaculatory prayers which he thought might be taken to the sick youth; they had no sooner been given to him, than he was entirely cured; in gratitude whereof, he placed himself at the service ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... His health was excellent, but towards the latter end of his life he was subject to fainting fits and to frightful dreams at night. On two occasions also, when some public business was being transacted, he had epileptic fits. He was very careful of his personal appearance, had his hair and beard scrupulously cut and shaven. He was excessively annoyed at the disfigurement of baldness, which he found was made the subject of many ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... another to these unknown subtleties, and he had need of all his strength to refrain from manifesting by some glad hurrah, by some untimely effusion of gestures and speech, the impulse of physical gaiety which pervaded his whole being, as happens to those great mountain dogs that are thrown into epileptic fits of madness by the inhaling of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... honorable man, and has told you the truth," said Baron von Worndle, gravely. "Your violent accusation frightened him; and he fell into an epileptic fit. He is affected with ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... austerity of her natural composure, and maintained it as if by a forcible exertion of resolution, repelling, as she spoke, the repeated returns of the hysterical affection, by such an effort as that by which epileptic patients are known to suspend the recurrence of their fits. Yet her mind, however resolved, could not so absolutely overcome the affection of her nerves, but that she was agitated by strong fits of trembling, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes, under lids trembling with nervousness, the forehead large and well-shaped, the expressive mouth telling of tortures without count, of unfathomable melancholy, of morbid desires, endless compassion, passionate envy. An epileptic genius whose very exterior speaks of the stream of mildness that fills his heart, of the wave of almost insane perspicuity that gets into his head, finally the ambition, the greatness of endeavour, and the envy that small-mindedness ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... pitied, but the victim is considered quite unpardonable. In his later manner Michelet is more Michelet than ever before. There is no common sense in it; it is simply wonderful! Neither art nor science, neither criticism nor narrative; only furies and fainting-spells and epileptic fits over matters which he never deigns to explain. Childish outcries—envies de femme grosse!—and a style, my friends!—not a single finished ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... has the right to know who is his father. I do not know, and I never did know, never, never! I cannot tell you, my boy." He seemed to be losing his senses, his voice grew shrill and he worked his arms about as if he had an epileptic attack. "Come!... Give me an answer.... She does not know.... I will make a bet that she does not know ... No ... she does not know, by Jove!... She used to go to bed with both of us! Ha! ha! ha!... nobody knows ... nobody.... How can any one know such things?... You will ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant |
