Early Convulsions in Epileptics and in Others

For many years, opinion on the significance of early convulsions has been most contradictory. Hammond, 1 in 1881, in opposition to the opinion prevailing at that time, wrote, [infantile convulsions] may pass into epilepsy; but if they do not I have never been able to find a single instance in my experience in which epilepsy ensuing in adult life has been preceded by the ordinary infantile convulsions. Walton & Carter, 2 ten years later, discount any relationship between early convulsions and epilepsy. They tried to determine the relative frequency of early convulsions in epileptics and in the normal population, and, from the difference, to deduce the prognosis. They reasoned in this way: The incidence of epilepsy in the general population is about 6 per thousand. The incidence of infantile spasms in normal children is 111 per thousand (one in nine). Since only one in fourteen epileptics has infantile spasms,