CONVULSIONS OF EARLY LIFE AND THEIR RELATION TO THE CHRONIC CONVULSIVE DISORDERS AND MENTAL DEFECT

Abstract

My own observations and a study of the literature point to a general agreement, in regard to certain factors, among those working on the problem of infantile convulsions and their relation to subsequent neuro-psychiatric disorders. 1. Convulsions repeated over a period of weeks or months during early life are more likely to be followed by than a single convulsion or a series of convulsions occurring within a relatively short period of a few days or hours. 2. A larger number of children have convulsions during the first year than at any other time. Husler(14) judges that in 41 per cent of his cases the onset of was at the age of four. This was not substantiated by our recent study where convulsions beginning in the first year were more frequently followed by serious results. Schrenk(15) finds that the peak in genuine epilepsy occurs around the second and the seventh-eighth year of life while the peak in symptomatic epilepsy is definitely in the first year of life. 3. The so-called id...