HYPOGLYCEMIA AND THE CONVULSIONS OF EARLY LIFE

A few years ago Josephs¹ made a suggestive contribution to the subject of a possible connection between hypoglycemia and ordinary eclamptic convulsions in infancy and childhood. A series of cases was reported in which convulsions developed after a short fasting period often accompanied by fever, and the importance of the fact was stressed that the fasting was of but brief duration. The relationship in some of these cases was presumptive merely, since no test of the blood sugar content was made. In others, however, examination of the blood showed a decided diminution in the sugar content, indicating a close association between this and the occurrence of convulsions. This result, however, still leaves the question unsettled whether the hypoglycemia is the cause, the accompaniment or the result of the convulsions; whether the low blood sugar and the convulsions came from the same cause, or whether the association was a purely