TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Seizures and Epilepsy: Epidemiology and Seizure Classification A1 - Cardon, Aaron L. A2 - Kline, Mark W. PY - 2018 T2 - Rudolph's Pediatrics, 23e AB - The earliest known description of epilepsy is from a Mesopotamian text from around 2000 BCE; it describes a patient with focal head deviation, loss of consciousness, and frothing at the mouth, and the prescription appears to have been exorcism. A neurophysiologic, rather than divine, underpinning of epilepsy was proposed and discussed extensively by Hippocrates in 400 BCE, although the Indian author Atreya may have speculated a similar cause nearly 200 years prior. However, despite Hippocrates’ renown and thorough treatise on the topic, and perhaps due to its dramatic manifestations and behavioral associations, the “sacred disease” remained one of the last to succumb to the rationality of the Enlightenment, with consensus in the medical community accepting its natural pathophysiology only late in the 18th century. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/28 UR - accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1182923260 ER -