By Ada Brownell
In my soon-to-be released book, Peach Blossom Rancher, one significant character is a medical
doctor who had a seizure after a head injury. Dr. Dillon Haskill has been in
the state asylum four years. He’s housed in a crowded ward, but he helps James
Cook, a teacher, sent to the asylum because he’s paralyzed, and Pete, a young
boy with Down’s Syndrome who often is abused by other patients.
In the early 1900s people like these three were thought to
be imbeciles or demon possessed.
The only time I’ve seen a person have a seizure was during a
high school graduation. The newspaper I worked for published reports on
Graduation ceremonies, including snippets of the valedictorian’s speech.
A shrill scream pieced the air, and several people ran to
the girl, dressed in a graduation gown. I wasn’t close, but from where I stood,
a reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain,
I saw her become rigid, shudder and shake violently. She appeared unconscious.
The people around her, I think paramedics, two or three on
each side, picked her up and carried her out, and in only minutes all was quiet
and the celebration continued as if nothing happened.
Later, someone told me the school prepared for such an
event. Sometimes the girl’s seizures were triggered by excitement.
I’ve known parents who had a child plagued by seizures, and
they could tell in advance when one was coming on and they’d take the person to
a private area, and in a fairly short time it was over.
The seizures began in one of the young men I knew when he
had a high sustained fever as an infant, which caused brain damage. Doctors then
often called what happened convulsions.
Throughout history seizures were not well understood. Even
in the early 20th Century people afflicted by convulsions were often thought to be demon
possessed. Then it was thought to be a form of insanity.
In 400 B.C. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, offered
another view of epilepsy, that it was just another natural disease and could be
treated through natural methods.
In a report from the psychology department of North Dakota
State University, Robert Bentley Todd in 1849 was the first to present the electrical
theory of epilepsy. John Hughlings Jackson in 1873, however, is credited for
devising the theory. When Hans Berger invented the electroencephalogram in the 1930s, during an epileptic seizure the EEG showed the
problem originated in the brain and was electrical.
Drugs were developed and over the decades a number of
effective treatments became available, including surgical removal of a damaged
section of the brain, and today even a device similar to a heart pacemaker
sometimes helps.
I learned about epilepsy and the different treatments as a
medical reporter. But another thing I learned is that epilepsy is a specific
condition and seizures can be caused by other problems such as brain tumors and
other events.
I interviewed a Christian psychiatrist about the difference
between mental illness and demon possession in his patients.
“It’s sometime difficult to determine the difference,” he
said. “But I pray for them all.“
The bottom line seemed to be that mental illness and
seizures are a physical problem that occurs in the brain, while demon
possession is a spiritual problem.
I think you will enjoy Peach Blossom Rancher.
Here’s the book summary:
NEW RANCHER SUMMARY
The Peach Blossom Rancher, an historical romance
Sequel to The Lady Fugitive, second in Peaches and Dreams series
By Ada Brownell
A handsome young man with a ranch in ruin and a brilliant doctor
confined to an insane asylum because of one seizure. Yet their lives intersect.
John Lincoln Parks yearns for a wife to help rebuild the ranch and eyes
Valerie MacDougal, a young widow.
Will John marry Valerie or Edwina
Jorgenson, the feisty rancher-neighbor who he constantly fusses with? This
neighbor who has a Peeping Tom whose bootprints are like the person’s who
dumped a body in John’s barn. Will John even marry, or be hanged for the
murder?
Also available on Amazon
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