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The Epileptic Colony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

It has hitherto been the rule in this country that epileptics should qualify as lunatics before they could find a home. The usual charitable institutions were for the most part closed against them, and, save a few special hospitals, no other place of rest could be found for them. Those “subject to epileptic fits” are, by the rules of many homes, excluded from them. Want of employment and the consequent worries of poverty aggravate their malady, and the utter helplessness of their condition leads to despondency and hastens their descent towards dementia. According to Edith Sellers, in a paper in “The Medical Magazine” for February, who quotes the recently published statistics of the Charity Organization Society, there are nearly 78,000 epileptics in Great Britain, and 39,000 of these are still in the full possession of their reason. Now it is a fact that the condition of life most calculated to ward off epileptic attacks is that of healthy occupation, and, under ordinary circumstances, this is the most difficult to obtain. Thus the scheme so ably advocated at the Mansion House, at a meeting presided over by the Lord Mayor, for the purpose of founding a home for those necessitous epileptics who are able and willing to work, meets an urgent and ever-growing want. The importance of such a scheme it would be difficult to over-estimate; it is a reasonable one, and it is based, to a great extent, upon the successful colony established at Bielefeld, in Westphalia. It is proposed to secure an estate of 100 acres within fifty miles of London, easy of access, where additional land may be procured when required, and to erect upon it appropriate buildings. Through the munificence of Mr. Passmore Edwards, the necessary funds for the purchase of the land and erection of the buildings are promised, and an encouraging amount of support from other quarters has been given.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1893 

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