Epilepsy, or the sudden loss of consciousness accompanied by convulsions, has always fascinated and baffled the observer. That primitive man is intensely interested in the disease is evidenced by numerous and detailed hypotheses of etiology and by still more numerous therapeutic measures. The primitive mind in its anthropomorphic conception of the universe and its phenomena frequently confuses post hoc with propter hoc.
Not only in epilepsy, but "in any painful illness, especially when the sick man is tossing and shaking in fever, or writhing in convulsions on the ground, or when in delirium or delusion, he no longer thinks his own thoughts or speaks with his own voice, but with distorted features and strange unearthly tones breaks into wild raving, the explanation which naturally suggests itself is that another spirit has entered into or possessed him. Any one who watches the symptoms of a hysterical-epileptic patient, or a maniac, will