Historical Introduction

The word epilepsy comes from the Greek word epilepsia, which means to be grabbed, attacked or seized.

Epilepsy was first mentioned in materials from about 500 or 700 BC.

Stone tablets, found in Babylon, contain detailed observations of epilepsy, the types of seizure, provoking factors, symptoms after seizures and so on. Out of a collection of 40 stone tablets which describe all the then known illnesses, 4 or 5 deal exclusively with epilepsy.

The holy sickness

The ancient Greeks saw epilepsy as a supernatural phenomenon, the holy sickness. To their way of thinking, only a god could throw a person to the ground, deprive him of his senses, cause convulsions, and afterwards bring him back to life, apparently quite unaffected. Hippocrates, a Greek physician who lived around 450 BC argued against this belief by claiming that the illness had quite natural causes. He was also the first to localize its origin to the brain.

The Bible

Over the next 2000 years three different theories as to the cause of epilepsy won favor at different times. One theory held that epileptics were possessed by spirits or devils. This view was in force at the time of Christ, as one can read in the Book of Mark chapter 9, verse 17 to 27, where Jesus drove out the evil spirits from a young man who had had attacks since childhood. As a protective measure it was customary to spit at people with the illness, in order to drive the evil spirits away from oneself. As was the case with many other illnesses, people believed that this illness was controlled by the heavenly bodies, in the case of epilepsy, the moon. Attacks were thought to be specially likely to occur at the time of the full moon, hence the name "moon sickness".

For thousands of years mankind was fascinated by the body fluids. The four most important were thought to be blood, black and red gall and phlegm. The cause of epilepsy, it was thought, was a build up of phlegm in the arteries leading to the head, resulting in the air supply being cut off. It was believed that blood circulated only in the veins, the blood vessels which carry blood to the heart, while the arteries carried air. The sight of foam around the mouth of a person having a fit was cited as proof of the accumulation of phlegm. Galenos, who lived about 100 AD, was of the opinion that phlegm built up in an arm or leg and from there spread to the rest of the body. This was put forward as the reason convulsions could start in an arm or leg and spread to the rest of the body. The tourniquet was used as treatment, and even amputation was resorted to as it was known to stop the spread of damaging substances in cases of snake bite. If the seizures did not have a localized start, a more drastic method was used to remove the phlegm, which was thought to have reached the head. Trepanation was carried out. A triangular hole was drilled through the scull to create a drain. These holes were often made at the rear of the scull, as it was thought that phlegm sank to the bottom of the scull cavity.

It was thought for a time that epilepsy was an infectious disease, caused by various poisons, or toxins, which attacked the body from outside. Convulsions were the body's attempt to get rid of these damaging substances, in exactly the same way as it was thought that hiccups were the stomach's attempt to empty itself of damaging food. The suspicion of the infectious nature of epilepsy gave rise to a marked social discrimination against sufferers. Then as now the illness was often seen as a curse, something one might wish on one's worst enemies. Amongst the plagues Martin Luther called down on the Catholic Church was epilepsy!

Of all the many forms of treatment for epilepsy one can read of in historical manuscripts, we can today see that up to the end of the last century, there was not a single effective form of treatment. Aeretaeus of Cappadocia (circa 50 AD) must have foreseen this when he claimed that the description "The Holy Sickness" could have a double meaning -- both the cause and the cure were known only to the gods!