CONVULSIONS AS MANIFESTATION OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

Abstract
With the ever-increasing knowledge of the convulsive disorders, the idiopathic epileptic group becomes progressively smaller. Trauma, infection, expanding lesions, degenerative processes, and toxic agents involving the cerebrum or subcortical structures of the brain have been shown to be responsible for convulsive attacks. General biochemical and physiological changes have also been shown to produce seizures. Although the cause of multiple sclerosis remains obscure and possibly falls into one of the previously enumerated categories, disseminated sclerosis has rarely been regarded as responsible for either Jacksonian or generalized convulsions. A search of the medical literature reveals few reported cases in which convulsive disorders are recorded as being symptomatic of multiple sclerosis. In 1881, Ross,1 in his textbook on the diseases of the nervous system, referred to epileptiform seizures in a small number of patients with disseminated sclerosis. His reference was apparently concerned with the Jacksonian type of seizure rather than with the