_Re_ violence and epilepsy, Lépine remarks that a pure epilepsy unclouded by alcoholism may occasionally give rise to acts of extreme violence, but these pure epileptic violences are infinitely rarer than the alcoholic ones. The Milanese was in point of fact alcoholic, and in his ancestry were a number of alcoholics as well as epileptics. According to Lépine, when subjects are “out for blood,” they are almost always either, like this Milanese, hereditary alcoholics, or else strongly predisposed subjects, or even the offspring of the insane.
A disciplinary case: Epileptic attacks with amnesia.
A Veronese, 23, quarrelled with his comrades, and one day wounded one. Another time, when reproved by a superior, he struck him with a shoe; and at still another time, hurled himself upon his superior officer and bore him to the ground. Yet he seemed to have a perfect amnesia for all these violent acts. At other times, he had convulsive attacks with a mental state which seemed to combine anger and depression, after which he would fall to the ground, lose consciousness, go into clonic spasms, spit bloody saliva, and cause wounds and abrasions upon his body. Once, after such an attack, he passed into a brief excited spell. Finally he was so insubordinate and violent to superior officers, that he was brought under hospital observation, having been excited and confused for a day.
Next day he was lucid, oriented, and tranquil; entirely amnestic for what happened the day before, though his acts were sufficiently unusual. He had threatened his superior officer and been reproved and sent to prison to think it over. In prison he had suddenly thrown himself against another innocent person and clutched him tightly about the neck. He threw another violently to the ground and then ran to help the previous victim! Bound fast, he had succeeded in freeing himself and thrown himself furiously against the prison door, whereupon he had fallen to the ground in an epileptic fit. He had tachycardia (120) and a generalized hypalgesia. The vasomotor reactions were excessive.
Upon investigation it proved that his mother had been subnormal and that the patient had been constitutionally excitable and unstable, given to attacks of anger and impulsiveness from youth up. In fact, he had been in prison several times for violence. He described himself in his restless spells as feeling a trembling all over his body as if his blood were boiling in his heart and his head, whereupon he would lose knowledge of what he was doing. He had been a quarrelsome boy, pursuing his mates with knives and stones. Once, after arguing with a car conductor, he had broken the car windows, turned everything upside-down, and thrown the conductor into the street.