A Statistical Inquiry into the Nature and Treatment of Epilepsy

A landmark Victorian clinical study that transformed how physicians understood and treated epilepsy. Alexander Hughes Bennett marshals over 150 case histories from the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic at Queen Square, deploying statistical analysis to challenge centuries of medical superstition. He meticulously examines how factors like sex, age, occupation, and hereditary tendencies correlate with seizure disorders, rendering visible patterns that earlier clinicians had dismissed as random or divine judgment. Most radical for its era, Bennett champions the systematic use of bromide salts as treatment, documenting not just dosage protocols but the granular reality of patient outcomes over months and years of administration. The book crackles with the tension between Bennett's careful empiricism and the uncertainty he inherits: a condition defined by its invisibility between seizures, dependent on patient testimony that he knows is unreliable. For medical historians and anyone curious about how modern neurology emerged from Victorian observation chambers, this text offers an unvarnished window into the era when physicians first began counting their way toward understanding the brain.