TY - JOUR T1 - THe proper use of phenobarbital in the treatment of the epilepsies AU - Grinker RR Y1 - 1929/10/19 N1 - 10.1001/jama.1929.27110160001009 JO - Journal of the American Medical Association SP - 1218 EP - 1219 VL - 93 IS - 16 N2 - The conception that the epilepsies constitute a convulsive syndrome due entirely to pathologic changes within the brain is waning. Pathologists have ceased to consider the morphologic changes found in the nervous tissue of the so-called idiopathic epilepsy as causal but rather as a result or corollary of the convulsions. In organic brain diseases, almost identical lesions may in one instance be associated with convulsions and not in another. The idea of Lennox and Cobb that a functional element consisting of various physicochemical factors and an unknown "convulsive capacity" plays a variable but always a large rĂ´le in the production of the convulsion along with the structural brain changes is an acceptable hypothesis.Thus the solution of the epilepsies may be made by purely biochemical means and their probable rational treatment directed on such a basis. Yet until such therapy is discovered the economic and sociological problem of the large number SN - 0002-9955 M3 - doi: 10.1001/jama.1929.27110160001009 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1929.27110160001009 ER -