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Volume 348:275-276 January 23, 2003 Number 4 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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For centuries, practitioners of midwifery have feared the occurrence of convulsions during pregnancy because they carried a particularly grave prognosis for both mother and fetus. In 17th-century Paris, eclampsia was associated with a 50 percent maternal mortality rate. The seizures of eclampsia were distinguished from other types of seizures largely by the absence of a history of seizures before pregnancy. In 1776, Thomas Young of Edinburgh, Scotland, said, "If the woman has had these fits before, there is less danger to be apprehended from them." John Burns in Glasgow, Scotland, wrote in 1832 that "there is nothing either more difficult, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

From Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

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