For 13 years, a lean Oklahoman named Paul Cadwell languished in Los Angeles' Veterans Administration Hospital, prisoner of the epilepsy that got him bounced out of the Navy. His self-confidence shaken, Cadwell could not face returning to the outside world. Now Cadwell is not only out of the hospital but enjoying a normal life. He earns $1.70 an hour in a small Los Angeles plant, has married an ex-WAC from Texas, lives in a middle-class bungalow, bowls on weekends.
His rejuvenation is the work of a unique movement called Epi-Hab, short for "epileptic rehabilitation." Epi-Hab has opened four miniature factories in which epileptics prove to themselves and to industry that they can man an assembly line. Says Epi-Hab's founder, Los Angeles Psychologist Frank Risch: "Epileptics are not human junk."
Superstition's Stigma. Although history's epileptics feature such notables as Mohammed and Napoleon Bonaparte, the vast majority have been stigmatized by superstitions that attribute the disease to demons. The actual cause is unknown, but seems to be related to a disturbance in the cerebral cortex. A patch of the cerebral cortex—the brain's command post —gets irritated, and sends out waves of involuntary impulses. On the receiving end, the body muscles respond with spasmodic convulsions—the epileptic seizure. In the average victim, the seizure passes within five minutes. Drugs, among them Dilantin and phenobarbital, eliminate seizures in 50% of cases, reduce them in another 30%.
Yet, for the U.S.'s 1,500,000 epileptics, life is still full of persecutions. Owing to a belief that epilepsy is inherited—actually, so far as is known, only a "predisposition" can be inherited—in ten states epileptics cannot marry, in 18 they can be sterilized. Federal law bars epileptic immigrants. Nowhere is the stigma felt more painfully than in job hunting, despite progress in recent years. The civil service, for example, will hire epileptics "provided that their seizures are adequately controlled and their placements selective." In a recent survey, 73% of Arizona manufacturing firms said they would not hire epileptics. Reason: fear that they are accident-prone.
Cot in the Corner. Epi-Hab began in 1949, when Dr. Risch, a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, joined the staff of the Los Angeles Veterans Administration Hospital. He set up a machine shop on the grounds, manned it with ten epileptics. In one corner Risch placed a cot. When a worker suffered a seizure, he was helped to the cot and cared for. When the seizure passed, he was encouraged to march right back to his machine. In 1956, with a small grant from the U.S. Government, Risch opened his first Epi-Hab plant in downtown Los Angeles, independent of the VA. Later, he inaugurated a second. In 1958, citizens adopting Risch's techniques started Epi-Habs in Jamaica, N.Y., and Phoenix, Ariz.