EPILEPSY ANTIQUITY TO MODERN ERA

TUMPAL ANTONY SIAGIAN

NEUROSIENCE MEDICAL FACULTY OF CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY OF
INDONESIA

Abstract
Since a long time ago, epilepsy has been known in the world community as
evidenced in the writings such as Sakikku (1067-1064 B.C.) from AssyrianBabylonia, China (770-220 B.C.), India Ayurveda (4500-1500 B.C.), in Ayervedic
Medicine known as Charaka Samhita (600 B.C.) they known as possessed or demons
etiology. In Hippocrates era (400 B.C.) the father of medicine said epileptic seizure
were caused at this attached is the brain. The case in the era after Hippocrates
Hellenistic and roman medicine at Julius Caesars emperor and which further also
known in 2nd century AD acknowledge the semiology of seizure, the contributed of
Islamic medicine (galenic) could be found in Rhazes (865 925 AD) and Avicenna
(980 1037 AD). In development Renaissance era to the 19 th century, rolandic
epilepsy was getting anatomically known (1597), vocal motor or Jacksonian (1676),
juvenile myoclonic epilepsy and complex partial seizure by Thomas Willis (1684),
absence seizure by Samuel August Tissot (1772) and non-convulsion (fall and loss
body function) by William Cullens. Furthermore, Charles L. provided Potassium
Bromide for Cataminia epilepsy (1850). The modern period, Hans Burger, a
neuropsychiatric from German, acknowledged EEG as a tool diagnostic of epilepsy
(1920). Later in 1941, the 1st atlas of EEG published by Gibbs and in 1669 EEG
became a fundamental classification of epilepsy by the International League Against
Epilepsy (ILAE). Recent development and advance knowledge of neurobiomolecular,
genetic, neuroimaging and pathophysiology of epilepsy makes the management of
epilepsy is getting perfected and study about epilepsy more extensively.
Keywords: epilepsy, EEG.