The Therapeutic Effect of Dehydration on Epileptic Patients

The significance of the increased amounts of cerebrospinal fluid found over the frontoparietal areas of the brain in epileptic patients was analyzed and discussed in a former paper.1It has seemed possible to correlate many of the isolated physiologic and clinical observations regarding epileptic patients in terms of a common factor, such as fluid, when otherwise no apparent direct relationship existed. Thus, the observations of Hippocrates2that the brains of persons with epilepsy were "unusually moist" may be considered substantiated by those of Alexander,3who used direct drainage of the cortex with some degree of success in epileptic patients showing increased collections of subarachnoid fluid. Dandy4has repeatedly called attention to these abnormal collections of fluid distributed over the frontoparietal areas of the brain, characteristically found in the patient with chronic epilepsy. Mixter5has remarked on the presence of this fluid in excessive amounts in