Epilepsy. A Study of the Idiopathic Disease.

Though starting with what seems to us a defective definition of the disease, making loss of consciousness its essential feature, this is an excellent monograph on the subject of epilepsy. The scope of the book is somewhat limited, but the more important factsare most satisfactorily handled. Turner considers epilepsy a sign or stigma of a neuropathic inherited disposition, based on certain well defined structural defects. All the usually recognized etiologic factors are discussed, but the author does not give the importance to parental alcoholism that is attributed to it by French authors. The psychic features of the disease are well discussed and the general epileptic character is recognized as not solely a consequence of the seizures but an expression of the same nervous constitution which gives rise to the convulsion. Mental failure is not itself an essential feature of the disease. As regards the pathologic anatomy, the actual causal lesions