MEDICO-LEGAL IMPORTANCE OF EPILEPSY. At tacks of psychic epilepsy are of vast medico-legal importance. Epilepsy is common among the criminal class, and the lower type of epileptic is cunning, deceitful, treacherous, and bold. Bevan Lewis c.•Ils ,:itention to the fact that leading ideas, delusional (1. otherwise, prevailing in the pre-paroxysmal stage, are likely to become opera tive in conditions of post-epileptic automatism and during psychic equivalents. lt is a hard task to decide whether an epileptic is accountable and should be punished for crimes committed during a psychical 'manifestation. equivalent or post epileptic. The epileptic will perform automatic ally complex acts that have the very appearance of volition. The discovery of motive in an interparoxysmal complaint or threat is not proof of the responsibility of the patient for crime committed during the attack.
A just disposal will be made of these criminals and of the malingerers for whom their legal ad vocates enter a plea of transient insanity due to epilepsy, when they are promptly confined in a hospital under the eye of a competent alienist, that their inter-paroxysmal mental state may be studied, and the pre-paroxysmal and post-paroxys mal stages of subsequent attacks may be observed. Study of the intervallary period will generally prove barren of result ; rarely will it afford us evidence of a mind governed by delusions. Study of the conditions immediately antecedent and subsequent to the attacks will give its evidence as to the presence of genuine automatism, of un controllable impulse, or of blind fury operating during reductions in consciousness.