The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology: By Owsei Temkin, M.D. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1945. 380 pp.

This book is a scholarly, historical survey of epilepsy from antiquity to modern times. The Falling Sickness is used as a title because the disease was so called throughout the centuries, serving as a vague descriptive concept of the illness. The author has studied the opinions of laymen, philosophers, and theologians as well as of physicians of the past. The book gains greatly by the inclusion of the cultural background of the times and its varying influence upon the character of the treatment and theories of the causation of the illness.

The book is divided into five historical periods: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Period of Enlightenment, and the Nineteenth Century. Beginning with the writings of the ancient Greeks from about the year 400 B. C., the author quotes extensively from what he believes is the first known monograph on epilepsy, 'On the Sacred Disease' in the Hippocratic collection, consisting mainly of an attack against prevailing popular superstition. In the subsequent chapters, Dr. Temkin records the long conflict of the magical superstitions and supernatural concepts of the disease with natural and scientific conceptions.

The book ends with a discussion of the writings of Charcot and Hughlings Jackson, who crystallized the more important scientific thoughts and observations of the past, and formulated relatively modern scientific concepts of epilepsy. Charcot, depending partially upon the fundamental concepts of Briquet, clearly distinguished between organic epilepsy and functional hysterical convulsions. Jackson, in the late 1860's began to develop his theories of the physiological organization of the central nervous system and applied them to explain epilepsy. He considered the disease not as a specific entity but a symptom of 'occasional, sudden, excessive, rapid and local discharges of grey matter'. He described various types of epilepsy and suggested the inclusion of migraine in the category of the 'epilepsies'. He received supp