"Epileptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... asses, John Walters, one of the soldiers, fell down in an epileptic fit, and expired in about an hour after. The Negroes belonging to our guide set about digging a well, having first lighted a fire to keep off the bees, which were swarming about the place in search of water. In a little time they found water in ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... tomato catsup, liquid bluing, burnt cork, English mustard, Easter dyes and the yolks of a dozen eggs over himself, seasoning to taste with red peppers. Then he spread a large tarpaulin on the floor and lay down on it and had an epileptic fit, the result being a picture which he labeled Revolt, or Collision Between Two Heavenly Bodies, or Premature Explosion of a Custard Pie, or something else equally appropriate. The Futurists ought to make ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... deepens without warning, until she is suddenly seized with a convulsion, beginning in one half of the face, then involving the arm, next the leg of the same side of the body, until the convulsion, violent and purely epileptic form in character, becomes universal. This is attended by loss of consciousness, out of which she passes into a series of convulsions, gradually increasing in severity, in one of which she dies—or consciousness, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... of epilepsy also in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by the section ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... Edinburgh graduated in medicine with high distinction in 1868; in 1872 became professor of Forensic Medicine at King's College, London, and afterwards physician to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic; his most notable work has been done in connection with the brain, and his many experiments on the brains of living animals have resulted in much valuable information, embodied in his various writings; is editor and co-founder of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of its ancestors was thus affected, but 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 ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... his admiration for the opera. It was expressed in a manner peculiar to Jernington that became almost epileptic, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... son is epileptic and can earn nothing, and is, in addition, a great eater. He is a good man and a Christian. As we entered, the son and daughter went out. The mother and little daughter were baptized. The father did not wish his big daughter baptized. When she is married she will get a heathen ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Francois, Denmark was sold with others of the slaves to a planter who owned a considerable estate. On his next trip, however, Captain Vesey learned that the boy was to be returned to him as unsound and subject to epileptic fits. The laws of the place permitted the return of a slave in such a case, and while it has been thought that Denmark's fits may have been feigned in order that he might have some change of estate, there was quite enough proof in the matter to impress the king's physician. Captain Vesey ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... mean time experiments were carried on in various hospitals of Paris. The epileptic patients at the Salpetriere were magnetised by permission of M. Esquirol. At the Bicetre also the same resuits were obtained. M. de Foissac busied himself with the invalids at the Hospice de la Charite, and M. Dupotet was equally successful ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... changes in the world's history have been effected by dwellers in the borderlands. Mahomet was an epileptic, and his first vision was the result on an epileptic convulsion or seizure. The character of his visions was exactly like that of those visions which an epileptic sees and describes at the present time. Mahomet believed in his visions, and, what is ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... spat 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 ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... view we can perhaps understand why mistletoe has 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 Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had been a macaw or a monkey. Captain Vesey sailed for St. 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • 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 bear such an affliction. Though ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... 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 ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... his hold on my arm and dropped back moaning and shivering into his seat. His eyes closed, his whole frame trembled, and he looked like a person just recovering from an epileptic fit; then he seemed to sink to sleep. It was now getting quite dark, for the sun had been down some time, and it was with the greatest relief that I saw Dona Demetria gliding like a ghost into the room. She touched me on the arm and whispered, "Come, senor, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... six exceptions, one had been healthy until twenty-one, and then had suffered from ovaritis, so that, although engaging in the work of a healthy woman, she should really be classed apart. One was subject to epileptic convulsions, and may therefore be fairly ruled out for the same reason. The remaining three were in good, even robust, general health. In two, pain was experienced for two days, and a certain diminution of capacity for mental exertion, which, however, had never been sufficient ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... sign of convulsions, the countenance was like that of an epileptic arrested in one ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous. Upon the same 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; ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... features of this extraordinary creature became convulsed, and she fell to the ground foaming in an epileptic fit, and was ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... often simulated. The foaming at the mouth is produced by a piece of soap between the gums and the cheek. The true epileptic, especially if he suspects that a fit is imminent, takes his walks abroad in some secluded spot, whilst the impostor selects a crowded locality for his exertions. The epileptic often injures himself in falling, his imitator never; ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... 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 seen ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 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 ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... razor on his leg Waiting until the shriek subsides. The epileptic on the bed Curves backward, clutching at ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... untamable 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 is insatiable ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the habit has been developed by selection until the bird destroys all trace of his original shapeliness, though he seems to take pride in his diseased appearance. The tumbler, probably derived from some ancestor afflicted with a disease of an epileptic character, manages to go through his convulsions in the air without serious consequences and apparently with some pleasure to himself. There are over one hundred less conspicuous varieties, of which only one deserves notice, and this for the reason that it has some possible utility to man and ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... inspiration or possession is commonly invoked to explain all abnormal mental states, particularly insanity or conditions of mind bordering on it, so that persons more or less crazed in their wits, and particularly hysterical or epileptic patients, are for that very reason thought to be peculiarly favoured by the spirits and are therefore consulted as oracles, their wild and whirling words passing for the revelations of a higher power, whether ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... be the great triumph of "morals and medicine." The passion of avarice resembles the thirst of dropsical patients; that of envy is a slow wasting fever; love is often frenzy, and capricious and sudden restlessness, epileptic fits. There are moral disorders which at times spread like epidemical maladies through towns, and countries, and even nations. There are hereditary vices and infirmities transmitted from the parent's mind, as there are ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... nothing, casting back her mind over the history 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
... hiding-place to resume her proper shape. In 1682 three women were executed at Exeter. Their witchcraft was of the same sort as that of the Bury witches. Little variety indeed appears in the English witchcraft as brought before the courts of law. They chiefly consist in hysterical, epileptic, or other fits, accompanied by vomiting of various witch-instruments of torture. The Exeter witches are memorable as the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... having 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 over into the providential cutting in ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... towards the ceiling; then she would burst into tears, and it was not till some half-hour had passed that she grew calm as usual. Her father, knowing her hysterical tendencies, was always excessively anxious about this trait in his youngest girl, and feared the attack to be a species of epileptic fit. Not so her sister Julia. Julia had found Out what was the cause. At the moment before the jumping, only an exceptionally sensitive ear situated in the chimney-nook could have caught from down the flue the beat ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... populate. Already weakened by the exile of the most sober and industrious of her population, the Jews; drawn into a foreign policy for which she had neither the means nor the inclination; instituting at home an economic policy which was almost epileptic in its consequences, she found her strength dissipated, and gradually sank into a condition ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... fixedly at it, but 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 awake ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 to avert ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... transport her 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 ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... few years of 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 and children, knocked ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... of 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 ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... affected, his nerves having been weak from childhood, and already so shattered that, in 1846, he was on the verge of insanity. Even at that time he had begun to have attacks by night of that "mystical terror," which he has described in detail in "Humiliated and Insulted," and he also had occasional epileptic fits. In Siberia epilepsy developed to such a point that it was no longer possible to entertain any doubt as to the character of ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... the spine and oscillations of the hands when spread horizontally with the fingers and thumbs wide apart. This may in one way be accounted for by the difficulty that men have in obtaining wives, owing to the scarcity of women. Apoplectic and epileptic fits and convulsions were not of very frequent occurrence, but they seemed severe when they did occur. The fire cure was usually applied in order to drive away the spirits that were supposed to have entered the body, but, all the same, these fits at times resulted in temporary ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... minutes to get his history, during all of which time he was responsive and interested, constantly correcting statements of his father and volunteering other information. Eleven days after the operation he was reported to have had no more epileptic seizures. "Doesn't talk in sleep. Doesn't snore. Doesn't toss about the bed. Has more self-control. Tries to read the paper. His immoderate appetite is ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... struggling on the floor, in what looked like an epileptic fit, and Johnson and another warder were holding him from ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the most injurious and 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 ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... unquestionable example of acquired and transmitted 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 in a quite different form: exophthalmia, loss of toes, etc. But it is not demonstrated ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... himself. At what time his epilepsy began is obscure, but this dreadful disease faithfully and frequently visited him during his whole adult life. From a curious hint that he once let fall, reenforced by the manner in which the poor epileptic in "The Karamazov Brothers" acquired the falling sickness, we cannot help thinking that its origin came from a blow given ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... his attitude and strange apparel! And then to go within, to announce yourself as an intending purchaser, and, closely watched, be suffered to undo those bundles and breathlessly devour those pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults - it was a giddy joy. That shop, which was dark and smelt of Bibles, was a loadstone rock for all that bore the name of boy. They could not pass it by, nor, having entered, leave it. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supplies instruction 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, electric ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... that the police had to be called in. A cooper's widow, who had managed to pay her premiums for one year, but had been unable to continue the payment for the quite sufficient reason that she had been in the hospital, fell headlong to the floor in epileptic convulsions when ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... 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 was constantly ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... into the room, and then commenced a terrific conflict. So powerful and so fierce was he, that the four of us were shaken off again and again. He appeared to have the convulsive strength of a man in an epileptic fit. His face and hands were terribly mangled by his passage through the glass, but loss of blood had no effect in diminishing his resistance. It was not until Lestrade succeeded in getting his hand inside his neckcloth and half-strangling him that we made him realize that his struggles ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... running away before the prophet's eyes. It was even said that Dona Maria's aversion to Pereo since the accident arose from a belief that some assistance might have been rendered by him. But it was pointed out by Sanchez that Pereo had, a few moments before, fallen under one of those singular, epileptic-like strokes to which he was subject, and not only was unfit, but even required the entire care of Sanchez at the time. He did not attend the funeral, nor did Mrs. Saltonstall; but the family was represented by Maruja and Amita, accompanied by one ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... sordidly interested motives. His great private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's notice, to the amount of L40,000. On the other hand, his enemies diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious, arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political insight, else he would not have tried to play the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... eternally-revolving-in-upon-itself transcendent morality of the Gospel discourses. This morality sets up a forced, to the vast majority impossible, standard of 'personal holiness' which, when realised, has seldom resulted in anything but (1) an apotheosised priggism, e.g. the Puritan type, or (2) in an epileptic hysteria, e.g. the Catholic saint type."[987] Mr. Blatchford states: "I have been asked why I have 'gone out of my way to attack religion.' In reply I beg to say that I am working for Socialism when I attack a religion ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... communities where the human interest is still thin and sparse. It is valuable in itself, and it produces an occasional detached sensation. There was the case, in Dr Drummond's church, of placid-faced, saintly old Sandy MacQuhot, the epileptic. It used to be a common regret with Lorne Murchison that as sure as he was allowed to stay away from church Sandy would have a fit. That was his little boy's honesty; the elders enjoyed the fit and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... dangerous persons,[34170] the declasse, the corrupt, the perverted, the maniacs of all sorts. In Paris, from which they command the rest of France, their troop, an insignificant minority, is recruited from that refuse of humanity infesting all capitals, amongst the epileptic and scrofulous rabble which, heirs of vitiated blood and, further degrading this by its misconduct, introduces into civilization the degeneracy, imbecility, and infatuations of shattered temperaments, retrograde instincts, and deformed brains.[34171] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the 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 forward in the Chamber of Representatives. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Richard and Lady 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 of having a stranger spying about them very much; but it was inevitable, for the epilepsy was a ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... uttered an intelligible word. Augusta is fifteen years old, weighs two hundred and five pounds, and possesses only slight traces of intelligence. Teething spasms, occurring when they were about two years old, is the cause of their idiocy. Both are subject to frequent and violent spasms or epileptic fits. They need constant care and attention. Should Bertha's hand fall into the fire, she has not sufficient intelligence to withdraw it from the flames. Both are helpless as children. The State provides for insane, but not for idiots. Keseberg says a bill setting ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... 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 ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... 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 ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... with which she could very well dispense—namely, the Wiertz Gallery. It is a collection of horrors depicted on a colossal scale by a man whose powers of painting were scarcely equal to those of a respectable scene-painter. A series of nightmares, expressed with a sort of epileptic violence and without any artistic value, clothe the walls of the immense studio with gigantic abominations. There is neither originality of conception nor intelligence of execution to redeem their hideousness: their horror is of the simplest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of him is—" He broke off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. "I can't imagine her—oh, NO!" he gasped. And he began to pace the floor. "A half-witted epileptic!" ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... living herself on nothing. She is small and slender like the women-saints of the Church. The poor feeding of those days must needs make women fine-bred, but lacking also in vital strength. The children die off in vast numbers: those pale roses are all nerves. Hence, will presently burst forth the epileptic dances of the fourteenth century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth century, there come to be two weaknesses attached to this state of half-grown youth: by night somnambulism; in the daytime seeing of visions, trance, and the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... altered since I was present at the representation of that performance; but certain I am, when I beheld him in that critical conjuncture, his behaviour appeared to me so uncouth, that I really imagined he was visited by some epileptic distemper; for he stood tottering and gasping for the space of two minutes, like a man suddenly struck with the palsy; and, after various distortions and side-shakings, as if he had got fleas in his doublet, heaved up from ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of this 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 vicious, the physically unfit, defective, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... removed into it from Wilson Street, had there been no changes. But of this number two young children died, two Orphans were taken back by their relatives, who were by that time able to provide for them. One boy was sent back to his relations, partly on account of epileptic fits, and partly on account of oft-repeated great disobedience, in order that we might thus make an example of him for the benefit of the rest. Three boys were sent to their relatives, as ready to be apprenticed, four boys were apprenticed at the expense of the Institution, and provided ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... on the mount of transfiguration, a dumb, epileptic, and lunatic boy was brought by his father to those disciples who ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... the heaviest cares that can settle down upon man. Wise? Oh, yes, we'll grant that, but as I before remarked, my wisdom lacks proper direction. It is like ill-directed energy, and that, you know, counts for nothing. I once knew a fellow that expended enough energy in epileptic fits to have made him a fortune. He'd fall down and kick and paw the air—a regular engine of industry, but it was all wasted. But he had a brother, a lazy fellow, and he conceived the idea of a sort of gear for him, so that his jerkings and kicks operated a patent ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... born with the same 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 which ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... 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
... 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 of the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of the case of an epileptic idiot, incapable of independent movements, and who spends the whole day in playing with some toys; but his temper is morose and easily roused into fierceness. When any one touches his toys, he slowly raises his head from its habitual downward ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... you? Then 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 you've ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... 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 a ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... his business in the morning, and returned in the afternoon to a high tea. In the evening he wrote and read aloud. The only thing that made him different from other men was that he had the fear of epileptic attacks for ever hanging over him; and further, he was unfitted for society owing to a very painful and violent stammer. I saw him twice in my life; remote impressions of people seen for a single evening are often highly inaccurate, but I will give them ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... an epileptic. The sadness that is bound up in the word only those who have experienced it can know. She worked with her needle as long as she could. At the warning cry of one of the terrible attacks, her mother ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... and the shaded 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 would ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... lasted, intermingled with dancing and singing, until midnight. The old people did not leave the table for fourteen hours. The grave-digger did the cooking, and did it very well. He was renowned for that, and he left his ovens to come and dance and sing between every two courses. And yet he was epileptic, was poor Pere Bontemps. Who would have suspected it? He was as fresh and vigorous and gay as a young man. One day we found him lying like a dead man in a ditch, all distorted by his malady, just at nightfall. We carried him to our house in ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... of this inquiry also show that degeneracy among criminals is sometimes inherited and sometimes acquired. It is inherited when the criminal is descended from insane, drunken, epileptic, scrofulous parents; it is often acquired when the criminal adopts and deliberately persists in a life of crime. The closeness of the connection between degeneracy and crime is, to a considerable extent, determined ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... absolutely unknown topic to British psychologists. 'So ist das Feld dunkler Vorstellungen das groesste in Menschen.' He has a chapter on 'The Divining Faculty' (pp. 89-93). He will not hear of presentiments, and, unlike Hegel, he scouts the Highland second-sight. The 'possessed' of anthropology are epileptic patients. Mystics (Swedenborg) are ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... cold cause; 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 ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... The new Workhouse is one of the largest in the country, the area within its walls being nearly twenty acres, and it was built to accommodate 3,000 persons, but several additions in the shape of new wards, enlarged schools, and extended provision for the sick, epileptic and insane, have since been made. The whole establishment is supplied with water from an artesian well, and is such a distance from other buildings as to ensure the most healthy conditions. The chapel, which has several stained windows, is capable of seating 800 persons ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... 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. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... 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 Sub-conscious Personality is capable ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... altogether consistent with my own 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 so long ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy. Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is vanquished; we can now turn our ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... motions from what dreadful torture she was suffering; she seized herself by the breast, the neck, the soles of her feet, her knees. Thaddeus sprang towards her, thinking that she had gone mad or was having an epileptic fit. But these movements proceeded from a ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... aspect between the moon and Mercury, and neither behold the horoscope, or Saturn and Mars shall be lord of the present conjunction or opposition in Sagittarius or Pisces, of the sun or moon, such persons are commonly epileptic, dote, demoniacal, melancholy: but see more of these aphorisms in the above-named Pontanus. Garcaeus, cap. 23. de Jud. genitur. Schoner. lib. 1. cap. 8, which he hath gathered out of [1290]Ptolemy, Albubater, and some other ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... common. The proportion of feeble-minded was 48 per cent. It was estimated that the Hill Folk have in the last sixty years cost the State of Massachusetts, in charitable relief, care of feeble-minded, epileptic, and insane, conviction and punishment for crime, prostitution pauperism, ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... on to himself, "is but three and twenty. He is a better man than Lord Wellington with the gout, than the paralyzed Regent, than the epileptic royal family of Austria, ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... strength or goodness of constitution. For the same reason the women did not wash their new-born infants with water, but with wine, thus making some trial of their habit of body; imagining that sickly and epileptic children sink and die under the experiment, while healthy became more vigorous and hardy. Great care and art was also exerted by the nurses; for, as they never swathed the infants, their limbs had a freer turn, and their countenances a more liberal ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the collar at the back. Abimelech Johns was a tin-miner who had spent his days in profane swearing and coursing after hares with greyhounds until the Lord had thrown him into a trance like that which overtook Saul of Tarsus, and not unlike an epileptic fit Abimelech himself had had in childhood. Since the trance he was a changed man; his passion for souls was now as great as his passion for pleasure had been before, and he had a name for working himself ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... my 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 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, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... 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
... white?" Startled, O'Iwa looked round from the glass into which she was peering. She was taken by surprise. In their personal relations Iemon had always been more than considerate. For some weeks in secret she had been using this drug of Suian Sensei. In childhood O'Iwa had shown something of an epileptic tendency. This had worn off with time. Of late the recurrence had alarmed her. The drug of Suian, at the time anyhow, made her less conscious of the alarmed critical feeling which heralded the inception of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... 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 many ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... contexts. The same "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 different significance ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Paris is completely epileptic. A result of the congestion caused by the siege. France, on the whole, has lived for several years in an extraordinary mental state. The success of la Lanterne and Troppman have been very evident symptoms of it. That folly is the result of too great imbecility, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... miscalculated the old man's infirm temper, and the daughter's skillful use of it. He was unprepared for Flip's boldness and audacity, and when he saw that both barrels of the accusation had taken effect on the charcoal-burner, who was rising with epileptic rage, he fairly turned and fled. The old man would have followed him with objurgation beyond the door, but for the restraining hand ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... 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
... 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 Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... apparatus which is, so to say, the guardian of the genital apparatus. Most of the so-called bladder disturbances of this period are of a sexual nature; whenever the enuresis nocturna does not represent an epileptic attack it ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... a criminal urged on toward the scaffold rather than a man of affectionate disposition welcoming home a family circle unexpectedly enlarged. The hoarse gurgle which escaped his lips might have gassed for a greeting, or it might have presaged an epileptic seizure. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... toward the close that Rayder came upon the floor with a fat widow milliner. He had taken a few drinks of gin and was trying to act kittenish when, in the midst of a cotillion, the widow fell to the floor in an epileptic fit. They bore the woman to an adjoining room, where she soon recovered, but it was such a shock to Rayder's nerves that he went out and braced up ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... in mind and body to the descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee. Intellectual blemish will almost always accompany material blemish. The soul will be attacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but little whether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminal instincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement: the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could invent has followed actions which, as a rule, cause less harm and are less perverse than ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... 5.—Estimates as to Numbers of Mental Defectives: Education Department Returns; Retardation, Problem of; Feeble-minded and Epileptic Cases, Return ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... that of an Epilepsy, and next Day had another Fit of the same kind; from the Time the Swelling first appeared till the Time he had the first Fit, he had no Ague, but it returned the second Day after the second epileptic Fit; another Blister was applied, and he had no Return of the epileptic Fits, though his Ague continued obstinate till March, at which Time he was sent to England[88].—About the same Time the aguish Fits of two others were stopt by ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... his chin. Threading her way towards him, she happened to look up. By the rails of the pier above she saw her husband. He was leaning there, looking intently down; his tall broad figure made the people on each side of him seem insignificant. The clean-shaved, square-cut face, with those almost epileptic, forceful eyes, had a stillness and intensity beside which the neighbouring faces seemed to disappear. She saw him very clearly, even noting the touch of silver in his dark hair, on each side under his straw hat; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is a far-reaching independence between the apparent mental variations and the seriousness of the brain affection. Light hysteric states may produce a strong absenting of the mind while severe epileptic conditions of the brain may be accompanied by very slight mental changes. Every neurasthenic state may play havoc with mental life, while grave brain destructions may only shade slightly the character or the intellect. To deal with the mental changes as ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... "Sur'itu" I was possessed of a Jinn, the common Eastern explanation of an epileptic fit long before the days of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... 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, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace |
