Anticonvulsant Drug Therapy of Behavior Problem Children With Abnormal Electroencephalograms

THROUGHOUT the history of child psychiatry a large number of physical measures have been used in an effort to influence pathological behavior in children. Electricity; surgical procedures on various bodily organs; restraints; whippings; applications of extremes of temperature; use of water internally and externally; use of fever-producing mediums; deprivation and prescription of divers foodstuffs in quality and quantity; every type of sedative and narcotic to be found in the materia medica, and administration of cathartics, allergens and antiallergens, and a host of other drugs of animal, vegetable and mineral origin, including hormones, make up only a partial list of such therapeutic attempts. Almost universally, each has been reported at one time or another to be efficacious. Almost as universally, the studies have been not well controlled, and in time many of these measures have fallen into desuetude. In 1937 Bradley,1in a well controlled study, reported on the use