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The writings on a Babylonian tablet from the British Museum and an Assyrian duplicate represent a missing chapter on epilepsy from a Babylonian textbook of medicine*, the Sakikku, written around 1067–46bc.1-3 Galen of Pergamon (ad130–200) deduced that epilepsy was a brain disorder due to an accumulation of thick humours.4
Vesalius recognised focal epilepsy: “ . . .a certain aura or vapour . . .carried from the leg through the hip, then the scapula, upward to the head; then the left leg is agitated by the vehemence of the disease and convulsed . . .”5
Willis observed that convulsions arose “most often from the head itself . . .the fault both of Blood sending, and of the Brain receiving . . .morbifick matter.6. . . . “The evil disposition of the brain is either hereditary or acquired.” Injury, “prolonged intemperance”, or chronic illness might initiate epilepsy. He described focal and spreading aurae.The mechanism was an “explosion”, “transmitted into various parts of the nervous system . . .as if grains of gunpowder were …
Footnotes
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↵* If in his fit he loses consciousness and foam comes from his mouth, it is miqtu. (cf major generalised fit)
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(If in his fit) he loses consciousness and his arms and legs bend round to the same side as his neck, it is miqtu.
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If at the end of his fit his limbs become paralysed . . .(cf Todd’s palsy)
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If before his fit a half of his body is “heavy” for him and pricks him . . .(Jacksonian sensory aura)
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If his seizure (or, possession) always takes place in the evening, it is the seizure of a ghost (nocturnal epilepsy).
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. . .if he cries “My heart, my heart!”, if he blinks his eyes, has hot flushes (?), rubs involuntarily the tip of his nose and the tips of his fingers and toes are cold; if he remains conscious but when you try to speak with him he acts strangely- hand of Lilu-la’bi. (autonomic disturbances and automatisms of complex partial (temporal lobe) fits).