History of epilepsy

Since the earliest times epilepsy was considered a disease of a marked supernatural character, a ‘sacred disease’ that could be driven out only by magical means.

An early text from Mesopotamia 11th BC) described the condition of anta’dubbu as a person whose neck turns left, whose hand and feet are intent and eyes wide open, froth flowing from the mouth and consciousness being loss, resulting from the hand of a god.

The term epilepsy originated from the Greek word for ‘seize’ or ‘attack’ and probably was derived from the idea of the individual being sized or attack by the gods.

Hippocrates opined that epilepsy was a natural affection with a hereditary origin, with its pathogenesis in the brain.

The Hippocratic writings referred to epilepsy as the ‘great disease’ a term subsequently adopted in its French translation as ‘grand mal’ to describe epileptic attacks.

Galen, the Greek physician and philosopher of the second century, attributed epilepsy to accumulation of two humors, phlegm and bile in cerebral ventricles.

Galen work not accessible until 11th century. During this period, epilepsy was surrounded by superstition and magic.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, epilepsy was a common diagnosis in the asylums and in some, patients with epilepsy were segregated in separate wards.

It is often said that the history of epilepsy surgery began on May 25, 1886, when Victor Horsley operated, at the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic at Queen’s Square in London, on a patient of John Hughlings Jackson.
History of epilepsy