ABSTRACT
A few years ago a church was opened, the foundation stone of which had been laid by the late Emperor Frederick, then Crown Prince of Germany. It is a beautiful church rising in a beech wood on a hill in the Teutoburger Forest. Bethel is not an asylum, not a charitable institution as people know them; it is rather, and in the fullest sense, a colony of mercy, a commonwealth of sufferers—the care of epileptics being the central object round which other needs have gathered, and as they arose, have been met. Bethel never was planned: it is a growth, a living thing. Epilepsy is a mysterious and fearful affliction, an unsolved problem. It is a disorder of the borderland between body and soul, its seat the nerve-centers and the brain—this is about all even medical science can tell people. It was known to the ancients, and was probably as frequent then as now.
