Office for the Study of History of Hellenic Naval Medicine, Naval Hospital of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Epilepsy Behav. 2010 Jan;17(1):103-8. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2009.10.023. Epub 2009 Dec 5.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the hallmarks of epilepsy as a disease and symptom during antiquity and especially during Ancient Greece and Rome. A thorough study of texts, medical books, and reports along with a review of the available literature in PubMed was undertaken. Observations on epilepsy date back to the medical texts of the Assyrians and Babylonians, almost 2000 years B.C. Considered initially as a divine malady or demonic possession, epilepsy was demythologized by the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, who was the first to set in dispute its divine origin. Physicians in the early post-Hippocratic era did not make any important contribution regarding the mechanisms of epileptic convulsions, but contributed mainly in the field of nosology and systemization of symptoms.
本文旨在强调癫痫作为一种疾病的特征，以及它在古代尤其是古希腊和罗马时期的症状。我们对文本、医学书籍和报告进行了深入研究，并在 PubMed 上查阅了现有文献。对癫痫的观察可以追溯到公元前 2000 年左右的亚述人和巴比伦人的医学文本。起初，癫痫被认为是一种神圣的疾病或恶魔附身，但医学之父希波克拉底将其祛魅，他也是第一个质疑癫痫起源于神的人。希波克拉底时代之后的早期医生并没有对癫痫发作的机制做出任何重要贡献，但主要在疾病分类学和症状系统化领域做出了贡献。
