Reviewing the history of epilepsy for defeating this chronic and stubborn disease

Abstract

Human beings have been recognizing and treating epilepsy for more than 3000 years. The cause of this disease was understood as demons in ancient times. A theory of brain disease was firstly proposed by Hippocrates. Although there were many years of case observation and development of anatomy, epilepsy had not been better recognized. Before 1000 years, the word "epilepsy" was firstly called by Avicenna. Afterward scholars of many countries had made elementary progress in classification, signs and symptoms, pathology and treatment of epilepsy. The first monograph of epilepsy was published in 1881 by Gower. Then drug treatment and surgical treatment had been applied and developed. In recent 100 years, due to the establishment of International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), publishing of Epilepsia and clinical employment of EEG, rapid progress has been made in basic and clinical study of epilepsy under the help of many other relative scientific knowledge. As early as over 3000 years before, there was already treatment of traditional Chinese medicine for epilepsy recorded in China. During the past 30 years, obvious advancement of learning and growing number of specialized personnel have been pushing epilepsy research forward in China.

doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1672-6731.2014.11.003