Local anesthetics in moderate doses have a blocking action not only on peripheral nerve fibers but on nervous structures in general.1 That they produce an anticonvulsive effect too has been demonstrated in recent years by Bernhard and Bohm.2 These authors studied in animals the inhibitory effect of local anesthetics on poststimulatory cortical after-discharge.3 Clinically the anticonvulsive effect was observed in status epilepticus of mainly focal type.4 It was further established that cortical discharges in certain types of epilepsy produced by intermittent photic stimulation were blocked by lidocaine.5 Experimental studies on animals indicated that lidocaine was decidedly superior to other local anesthetics,3 and since, moreover, Clive-Lowe and associates7 (1954) demonstrated, in a large clinical series, that lidocaine could be given intravenously in moderate doses without danger of toxic reactions, recent clinical investigations in this field have been chiefly concerned with this drug. In 1957,