Brain Damage after Febrile Convulsions

Despite the suggestions of several writers on the importance of convulsive seizures in infancy as an aetiological factor in the development of cerebral palsies, little attention is given to this association in the standard texts in general medicine and pathology, or even in the more special treatises on diseases of the nervous system. It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that convulsions occurring in the course of febrile illnesses are often not treated with the gravity and urgency they deserve. Because convulsions are so frequent an accompaniment of relatively innocuous infections and in most cases leave the patient apparently normal, the paediatrician may regard both a convulsion of purely febrile origin and the resulting signs of nervous disease as common manifestations of some other intracranial process. The following five cases are presented in the hope that the potentially lethal nature of convulsions will be more widely acknowledged.