ding, and writing: but in
every case his personality suffers a complete metamorphosis, his habits,
actions, and even handwriting assume a different character. Sometimes he
is seized by a mania for walking and tramps for miles; at others, he
undertakes interminable railway journeys. Tissie (_Les alienes
voyageurs_, 1887) cites cases of epileptics who travelled from Paris to
Bombay, who covered 71 kilometres on foot, and who wandered unconscious
for 31 months.

Sometimes epilepsy is manifested only by the tendency to undertake
purposeless journeys, as in the case of Ferretti and a certain M... who
visited the Mahdi in Africa and from thence travelled aimlessly to
Australia.

This ambulatory form of epilepsy is very common amongst lads of fourteen
or fifteen. Scarcely a week passes without the police receiving
information from parents that their son has disappeared from home with
only a few pence in his pocket. The wanderer is discovered later,
frequently in some small provincial town, which he has reached after
tramping aimlessly for days, sleeping in barns, and living on charity.
When questioned, the boy usually displays total ignorance regarding all
that has happened to him during the interval.

Dr. Maccabruni in his _Notes on Hidden Forms of Epilepsy_, 1886,
narrates the case of an epileptic, who during childhood received an
injury to his skull. Later, he started out on a series of wanderings to
Venice, Padua, Rome, Milan, Monaco, and Mentone. His journeys,
especially those to distant parts, were undertaken in a state of
unconsciousness and generally a short time before the commencement of a
fit.

These attacks may last any length of time, from a few minutes to several
months. In one of the cases observed by my father, the attack lasted a
fortnight. The patient, a young officer with whom we were personally
acquainted, was one of the quietest persons possible, but suddenly he
was seized with a mania for writing innumerable letters, especially on
stamped paper, in exaggeratedly large writing very different from his
usual style. These letters, which were full of absurdities, were posted
by the writer from the different towns he passed through on his aimless
journeyings, which lasted a whole fortnight. During one of these
seizures, he was arrested as a deserter and was unable to give any
explanation of his conduct.

In this particular patient, the disease assumed the mild form of absurd
letters and still more absurd