HISTORICAL SUMMARY
As long ago as 500 years before the dawn of the Christian era epilepsy was known and described, but the epileptic as a public charge was completely neglected until the latter part of the seventeenth century, when individual efforts were made in continental Europe to improve his condition, though without any uniform results until about the beginning of the century just passed. In 1846 France took the lead in establishing a small colony for epileptics and other defectives at LaForce, near Bordeau, to be followed by Germany in 1867, when the now celebrated colony at Bielefeld, in the northwestern part of the empire was begun with four patients in one hut, and which is still the leading institution of its kind in the world, now caring for nearly 1,800 sufferers from epilepsy and over 3,000 defectives, including the epileptics, of various other kinds. Next came England in establishing