Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia

In mediæval times, sufferers were regarded with awe, as being possessed by a spirit. Witch doctors among savages, and founders and expounders of differing creeds among more civilized peoples, have taken advantage of this infirmity to claim divine inspiration, and the power of "seeing visions" and prophesying. Epilepsy has always interested medical men because of its frequency, the difficulty of tracing its cause, and its obstinacy to treatment, while it has appealed to popular imagination by the appalling picture of bodily overthrow it presents, so that many gross superstitions have grown up around it.