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Abstract
The purpose of this article is to highlight the hallmarks of epilepsy as a disease
and symptom during antiquity and especially during Ancient Greece and Rome. A thorough
study of texts, medical books, and reports along with a review of the available literature
in PubMed was undertaken. Observations on epilepsy date back to the medical texts
of the Assyrians and Babylonians, almost 2000 years B.C. Considered initially as a
divine malady or demonic possession, epilepsy was demythologized by the Father of
Medicine, Hippocrates, who was the first to set in dispute its divine origin. Physicians
in the early post-Hippocratic era did not make any important contribution regarding
the mechanisms of epileptic convulsions, but contributed mainly in the field of nosology
and systemization of symptoms.
2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.