About 600,000 persons in the United States have fits, meaning that they are the victims of epileptic seizures. Drugs have not been conspicuously successful in aiding these unfortunate, and this because so little is known about epilepsy. What we need is a study of epilepsy in animals, if it can be produced in them, observes the New York "Times." Along comes Dr. Frederick A. Fender (Stanford University School of Medicine) with a neat solution, of this problem. He reports in the "Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry that he has succeeded in producing convulsions in experimental animals, and that these convulsions resemble epileptic seizures closely.
Dr. Fender implanted a tiny electrode under the scalp of an anesthetized animal. When the rested and healed animal was placed in a high-frequency electromagnetic field an electric current was induced in the electrode. This stimulated the brain and brought about convulsions, In several cases the seizure did not come until 2% minutes had elapsed after the electric shock. This Dr. Fender calls the "latent period." He believes either that something electro-chemical accumulates in the brain during this latent period, which finally "pulls the trigger," or that some normal electro-chemical relationship is abolished during the latent period.
Further indication that some such electrochemical substance is either built up or broken down by the artificial stimulus came in experiments under continued "stimulation. After one convulsive seizure prolonged stimulation would fail to cause æ second convulsion. Something necessary to the seizure was apparently being held in abeyance. But, if stimulation were interrupted for a brief period and then resumed, a new seizure would usually occur. In three instances, Dr. Fender reported, "a bizarre and stereotyped behaviour occurred in connection with seizures that appears to warrant a comparison with equivalents seen in human beings." This refers to what medical men call an "epi-lepric equivalent," æ passing mild form of epileptic attack without convulsion. Dr. Fender's cases are said to be the first experimentally produced epileptic equivalents in medical history.
"The most significant contribution thus far," Dr. Fender concludes, "is the preparation of an apparently normal subject that is going to have a convulsion seconds or minutes later. If properly equipped investigators could learn everything there is to know about such a subject within that latent period, clues to the mechanism of the convulsion might be forthcoming."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.