. Alienist and neurologist. . e case of men of genius, usually difficult to disprove and equally difficult to certainly should not be so as regards the major forms of epilepsy. Yet among thethousand and thirty persons of British genius I was only able to find epilepsy mentionedtwice, and in both cases incorrectly, for the National Biographer had attributed it toLord Herbert of Cherburg through misreading a passage in Herberts Autobiography,while the epileptic fits of Sir W. R. Hamilton in old age were most certainly not trueepilepsy. Without doubt, no eugenist could recommend an epile
. Alienist and neurologist. . e case of men of genius, usually difficult to disprove and equally difficult to certainly should not be so as regards the major forms of epilepsy. Yet among thethousand and thirty persons of British genius I was only able to find epilepsy mentionedtwice, and in both cases incorrectly, for the National Biographer had attributed it toLord Herbert of Cherburg through misreading a passage in Herberts Autobiography,while the epileptic fits of Sir W. R. Hamilton in old age were most certainly not trueepilepsy. Without doubt, no eugenist could recommend an epileptic to become a if epilepsy has no existence in British men of genius, it is improbable that it hasoften occurred among their parents. The loss of British genius through eugenic activityin this sphere would probably, therefore, have been nil. Putting aside British genius, however, one finds that it has been almost a common- * Alienist and Ncurologisl, 1887.**lVIan of Genius.■\Alienist and Neurologist, Page iHiv llumlied Kdurtecn THE ALIENIST AND NEUROLOGIST place of alienists and neurologists, even up to the present day, to present glibly a for-midable list of mighty men of genius as victims of epilepsy. Thus I find a well-knownAmerican alienist lately making the unqualified and positive statement that Mahomet,Napoleon, Moliere, Handel, Paganini, Mozart, Schiller, Richelieu, Newton andFlaubert were epileptics, while still more recently a distinguished English neurologist,declaring that the worlds history has been made by men who were either epileptics,insane, or of neuropathic stock, brings forward a similar and still larger list to illus-trate that statement, with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Apostle Paul, Luther,Frederick the Great, and many others thrown in, though unfortunately he fails to tellus which members of the group he desires to regard as epileptic. Julius Caesar wascertainly one of them, but the statement of Suetonius (not an un
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