Dealing with epileptic seizures
It was a few years ago, I would often see an old, lungi-clad man, apparently a beggar, rolling about on a pavement near Ramna Park with his tongue held tightly clenched between his teeth and a mixture of froth and blood oozing out of his mouth.
A number of people would be trying to revive the man with water. I once even saw someone pressing a shoe down on his nose, and then forcing it into his mouth, with the proclamation that the smell of the dirty shoe would revive the man as his legs were shaking violently.
Alas, nobody sensed that the man was actually having an epileptic seizure. Instead of simply turning his head on his side, to let his mouth clear and his tongue fall back, they held the wretched old man tightly and violently shook him because of ignorance, doing him more harm than good, no doubt.
Thank you for publishing the informative article on controlling epilepsy by Dr Banshari Mridha (December 4 issue). Pray and hope that it will teach many of us _ who know nothing about epilepsy _ something useful about helping those with the neurological condition, which had afflicted even a great general like French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Shehab Ahmed,
Elephant Road,
Dhaka.
