Local anesthetics in moderate doses have a blocking action not only on peripheral nerve fibers but on nervous structures in general.1That they produce an anticonvulsive effect too has been demonstrated in recent years by Bernhard and Bohm.2These authors studied in animals the inhibitory effect of local anesthetics on poststimulatory cortical after-discharge.3Clinically the anticonvulsive effect was observed in status epilepticus of mainly focal type.4It was further established that cortical discharges in certain types of epilepsy produced by intermittent photic stimulation were blocked by lidocaine.5Experimental studies on animals indicated that lidocaine was decidedly superior to other local anesthetics,3and 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,