HOME FOR EPILEPTICS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22344, 7 March 1938, Page 4

HOME FOR EPILEPTICS

TO TJEB IDXTOa OT TUB WUSSS,

Sir, —To me it would seem 33 “Fx-Nurse •” arid “Earnest are looking at the matter in a peculiar way as much as to say, "If you are sick through faults of your ancestry, then remain sick.” There havebeen many wondering conjectures as to the cause epilepsy. It was a disease formerly attributed to the wrath of the gods, or the agency of evil spirits, but in the meantime, does the cause matter very much, unless it be constant or recurring? If epileptics and mental deficients received more individual attention-' in some home removed from the stigma and the influence of mental hospitals, there would be hope. As it is now, once the portals are entered, then hope may be abandoned. Drugs are given to stifle vitality, but that is not much of a solution to a very important question. If “Earnest wants volunteers or co-operation to assist mental deficients then volunteers can be assured. Epileptics may be classed, to some extent, as mentally deficient. There is much valuable material lost in New Zealand through the neglect in attention to cases of deficient children. In many cases these children would, come right. But who cares? The parents caainot afford treatment, and in most cases the fraternity just shakes its learned head. "Oh, send the child to Templeton.”—Yours, etc., pENSa March 4. 1938. [Subject to the right of reply of Mrs Coleridge Farr, this correspondence is now closed.—Ed., "The Press.”]