AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Epilepsy, from the earliest times, has been branded 'hereditary’, and marriage and children for those "possessed" by this ailment was frowned upon. To Hippocrates and Galen (115) idiopathic epilepsy was that type which developed in the brain directly and was assumed to have a hereditary basis. Burton (84) in his "Anatomy of Melancholy", claims that the ancient Scots "instantly gelded" any man with falling sickness, and if a woman "were round to be with child, she with her brood were buried alive and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted".