A Talk on Epilepsy *This article is based on a lecture delivered to the Staffordshire Association for Mental Welfare, 4th October, 1937.

seems to be the only logical way of beginning this article. In the normally functioning brain, cells only react when they are stimulated by another cell in some other part. A fit is caused by a cell somewhere in the brain beginning to discharge spontaneously. As an illustration one may liken the brain to a smoothly running factory. In this factory one individual suddenly becomes an agitator and starts a revolution, infecting first his immediate neighbours and finally the whole factory. From this original focus in the brain a wave of excitation spreads to the rest of the brain cells, travelling faster and faster as it moves further away from the starting point. The wave may either die away?in which case it only produces a minor fit?or it may involve the whole brain, and in that case it produces