Epilepsy and Convulsive Disorders in Children

comprehensive, solidly scientific and timely contribution to the study of epilepsy in children. The author is a pedriatrician of distinction who had charge of the Johns Hopkins Clinic for epileptic children for sixteen years, and he presents the results of the intensive study of nearly a thousand cases. The clinic was on the grand transatlantic scale and included a full-time social worker to keep in touch with home and school conditions, an observation ward for clinical research, and laboratories with technical staff. " The problem of diagnosis is not one of searching for a single cause but of evaluating the relative importance of (a) heredity, (b) structural defects in the brain, (c) physiological disturbances, (d) personality maladjustments and (e) environmental strains in producing the symptoms of recurrent seizures." This rather scattered approach does not, however, prevent sound investigation into the pathological aspects of epilepsy, the chapters on effects of cerebral birth injury, on dietary treatment, on physiological influences and on the electro-encephalograph, being particularly full and illuminating. There appears to be less confidence in drug treatment for children and more in diets than would be shown by many specialists in this country. Perhaps for the first time in a book of this description, the psychological and social aspects of epilepsy receive adequate attention. Dr. Bridge follows Adolf Meyer in believing that very few cases in children are purely psychogenetic. He believes, however, the incidence of fits can be