The history of epilepsy - probably the longest history in medical literature to which any single disease, unless it be malaria, can lay claim - might well be said to stand as a monument to human error, to human fallibility; as lamentable evidence of the unnumberedness of those whispers of fancy to which the human mind has ever listened with credibility (Bunker, 1965). Epilepsy, once termed the ‘sacred disease’, might more accurately be described as the most ancient disease. One of the fascinations, and part of frustration, inherent in epilepsy research is the multiplicity of forces that impinge on people with epilepsy. The modern view of epilepsy originated in the work of the mid-nineteenth century neuro-scientists, the most important among them being John Hughlings Jackson. At present, the word epilepsy is used to refer to a class of epileptic disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures.
