Intro to Temple Fay revisited

INTRODUCTION
by Glenn Doman

On December 17, 1903, an epoch in the history of mankind was opened at Kitty Hawk, NC, which would markedly alter that history. Scant heed was paid to Man's first powered flight except by a handful of knowledgeable people. It would be a number of years before the world would recognize the import of that day or even realize what had actually happened at Kitty Hawk.

This paper by Edward LeWinn, which opens an epoch in the knowledge of that ancient symptom of brain injury, presently known as epilepsy, will markedly alter the lives of millions of human beings for the better and will actually save the lives of many. Scant heed is likely to be paid to this event, except by a handful of knowledgeable people. It is likely to be a number of years before the world will recognize the huge import of this paper and during those years the immense value of this work will be confined to a few thousand children.

These are the children who have been, who presently are, and who will in the future be on treatment programs of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.

For parents of children now and in the past on The Institutes' programs and who, as a result, no longer have seizures or are no longer addicted to anticonvulsant drugs, this paper is neither prospective nor is it theoretical. It is instead as real as is consciousness in children who were formerly semiconscious or unconscious.

Sadly for other hundreds of thousands of children who are presently diagnosed as having the nonexistent disease of epilepsy and who, as a consequence of anticonvulsant drugs, have their problems multiplies instead of eliminated, this understanding will not happen overnight.

Man has never understood the process of convulsing which he has seen as fits, spells, seizures, evil spirits, possession by devils, lunacy, the Sacred Disease or, more recently, as a "disease" called epilepsy.

In the course of his long history man has been subject to many fears which have struck terror into his heart. Almost all have been the product of his own ignorance and superstition. Few have struck terror in his heart to the degree generated by fear of seizures. In few situations has man's ignorance been as persistent and profound as it has been concerning fits.

Man has, with a few remarkable exceptions, seen convulsive disorders as being a possession of the victim by demons or devils. How else would we explain the ancient Biblical views of Mark, Luke and Matthew who regarded victims of seizures as being possessed by devils, or the ancient Hebrew word nichpea, meaning overtaken by a devil? How else would we explain terms in use today such as seizures, fits, and spells? By whom are we seized other than his satanic majesty? Who casts spells?

The convulsing person suffers doubly because in other men's minds, down through the ages, his affliction has been associated with insanity or with feeblemindedness.

This has been true despite the known fact that the list of victims of convulsions includes such undoubted geniuses as Mohammed, Caesar, Napoleon and many others. They have been regarded by the vast majority of observers, themselves geniuses, considered seizures to be perfectly natural in their origins, and even possibly beneficial.

This paper by Edward LeWinn challenges seizures and their treatment. In the largest sense it has taken almost 2400 years in the writing. It was approximately that long ago that Hippocrates , the Father of Medicine himself, pointed out to those who would cure the Sacred Disease that in these patients the brain is abnormally moist. In this he was right.

Almost half a millennium later Christ, who is believed by millions to have been the Great Physician, proposed that those who suffer seizures must fast, and this, too, is in its way true.

In a highly specific sense this paper has taken thirty-five years in the writing. It was brilliantly begun by Temple Fay who in 1942 proposed, in "The Other Side of a Fit", that epilepsy is not a disease at all but, instead, a symptom of brain injury which occurs in the absence of sufficient oxygen, as is often the case in the presence of profound physiological changes in the brain's environment. He proposed further that convulsive seizures are not an attempt on the part of mature to kill the person who has them. Quite to the contrary, Fay suggested that seizures are produced through a mechanism provided by nature to protect the person, precisely in the same way that nature employs vomiting to restore a state of normality. in this way, Fay pointed out, we do not cure vomiting but rather the illness in which vomiting is part of a natural and useful reaction of defense.

In all these things Fay, too, was right. How well I remember his inspired teaching during the years I had the honor and privilege to be the very young beneficiary of his genius and his vast insights.

Now, in the present paper Edward LeWinn, carrying Fay's sound neurophysiological insights even further, sets forth a brilliant and startlingly new view of seizures, observed with a clear eye and a keen clinical sense of cause and effect. He proposes for the first time that seizures are the ultimate product of loss of cortical control of lower brain levels and, further, that this loss of control is intensified by the consciousness-reducing effects of anticonvulsant drugs now in world wide use.

As if this observation were not staggering enough, he then makes clear that the answer to this ancient scourge of fits is to remove the drugs which reduce cortical control and to strengthen it by a program which permits central nervous system maturation and which enhances brain development.

Thus, the writing of this paper has been carried out from the time of Temple Fay and his insightful genius to the time of Edward LeWinn and his. In a highly practical way the staff of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential has participated in this effort. During the twenty -three years since the founding of The Institutes the staff has practiced the findings of these great geniuses with full comprehension and determination. Under the resolute leadership of Gretchen Kerr and also, in more recent years, Elaine Lee and Mary Kett, and with the courageous medical leadership of Roselise Wilkinson and Edward LeWinn himself, hundreds of children have actually had their lives saved or, through their heightened cortical control, their awareness restored and their futures made productive.

All this has been accomplished by:

1. A practical program of liquid balance in response to the problems envisioned by the early neurosurgeon, Hippocrates, the solution proposed by the Great Physician, Christ, and spelled out by the dean of neurosurgeons, Temple Fay.
2. The invention, by the staff of The Institutes, of the masking program and the respiratory patterning program which achieve greater oxygen availability for the brain, in answer to the oxygen lack first appreciated by Temple Fay.
3. The conceiving, designing and development by The Institute's staff of effective programs of neurological organization in order to achieve both organization of brain function and, ultimately, by it's control by the cortex, even in severely brain-injured children. From the tens of thousands of clinical facts observed and recorded in several thousand children treated by The Institutes, this last step was seen by Edward LeWinn and the ultimate and essential one in ending the circumstances which result in seizures.
4. The programs, devised by Edward LeWinn, for gradual

and progressive reduction and ultimate discontinuation of all anticonvulsant drugs, and carried out by Roselise Wilkinson with foresight and with courage. These programs and their clinical benefits have been most carefully observed and recorded by the entire staff.

The question is not whether this paper of Edward LeWinn's will save the lives or improve the functions of thousands, or even millions, of future children. That will happen.

The question, which no man can answer, is only how long it will take the world to understand the truths he has stated. How many hundreds, thousands or millions of future children must pay the dreadful penalty that millions have paid in the past as the result of the ancient and primitive perceptions of the causes and treatment of fits, spells and seizures?