One of the most startling and to the laity most terrifying symptoms of disease is a fit. Particularly is this true when the afflicted person is an adult, for convulsive attacks in children are not infrequently observed even by the layman. When an adult who has apparently been in perfect health has an epileptiform attack it creates such a vivid impression on the witnesses that a physician is consulted at once. The latter has not an easy task, for to ferret out the etiologic agent producing an epileptic attack in an adult who has never previously had a convulsive seizure demands the keenest clinical acumen. While idiopathic epilepsy is common in childhood, it becomes rarer as age increases, and, as Oppenheim1 stated, "We must always be on our guard when the epilepsy develops during adult life." Epilepsy is merely a symptom complex or, as Foerster2 said, a special form of