Electricity for Epileptics

Many of the world's famous and infamous men have been epileptics: St. Paul, Mohammed, Moses, Luther, Loyola, Alexander, Caesar, Peter the Great (see BOOKS), Napoleon and possibly Hitler.-In the Medical Record, Brooklyn's Dr. Edward Podolsky explains why epilepsy may be a spur to greatness. Epileptic fits result from a disturbed electrical equilibrium in the brain. Electrical energy continually piles up in the cortex (brain covering), is discharged at irregular intervals in fits. Many epileptics are nobodies, but the brilliant ones drive themselves like maniacs while the energy piles higher & higher.

Even brilliant epileptics, however, are haunted by fear of fits in public, or of the severe injuries which fits may bring about. In the British Medical Journal Dr. Gerald Caplan suggests a possible way to banish their worries. His idea: to drain off the epileptic's excess electrical energy by giving him an artificial fit "under controlled conditions of time & place" with the electric shock treatment used in insanity.

Dr. Caplan gave shock treatments on an average of once a week to 15 patients who had continued to have more than two major fits a month after full doses of anticonvulsant drugs. Results: 1) eleven patients had fewer fits; one had only one in two months; 2) each patient in shock duplicated his natural fit, going through his own peculiar pattern of motion; 3) recovery from electric shock was quicker than from natural seizures, which often incapacitate a man for the day; 4) the remaining natural fits were less severe than before.

-Called Teppichjresser (carpet devourer) because he sometimes thrashed on the floor when riled. Hitler is believed to have had mild epilepsy.

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