Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2018
The important clinical researches on Epilepsy during the last decade have contributed to afford a sound criterium for a correct discernment of the curious physical phenomena connected with this dreadful neurosis, in cases where it becomes of great moment, for a legal decision, to establish the positive grounds for a just estimate of the sanity or insanity of a culpable act committed by an epileptic. To the important bearing of the matter to be here briefly discussed, we have been fully alive for many years past, laying upon it particular stress, in the light in which we present it, as our contributions on the subject testify.
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* Legrand da Saulle, from whose work “Etude Médico-Légale aur les Épileptiques,” Paris, 1877, we take the chief points in this and the two following instances, as regards the psychical phenomena just related, as facts unprecedented in science, although we had pointed out such singular automatic acts as peculiar to cerebral, or psychical, epilepsy, and recorded in 1873, three instances of unconscious travelling while the patient was in this state, in our communication on Epileptic Insanity, distinctly establishing unconsciousness as the essential characteristic element of every manifestation of genuine epilepsy. Sardiea has also reported the case of a carpenter, who was epileptic, and travelled sixty leagues from home, returning from this long journey entirely ignorant why he had undertaken it. Google Scholar
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