AMAJOR obstacle to the experimental approach to human idiopathic epilepsy has been the absence of a nonsurgical means of producing the characteristic intermittent grand mal attacks and cerebral dysrhythmia of the human disease.
In May 1947, investigators1 at the University of Wisconsin observed that a diet of wheat gluten produced in the electroencephalogram of dogs an abnormality indistinguishable from that associated with human epilepsy. In December 1946, Mellanby2 demonstrated that it was the "agene" process (bleaching of the flour with nitrogen trichloride) which made the flour a convulsant (presumably in its gluten derivatives). Numerous reports3 confirmed Mellanby's conclusion, while further studies4 have shown that it is a reaction product of wheat protein and nitrogen trichloride which is the convulsant agent.
The fact that a cerebral dysrhythmia can be induced in dogs by the ingestion of an adequate diet containing large amounts of bread is a matter