From wonder and fear: make epilepsy a global health priority

In the heart of London, the British Museum holds a Babylonian script with what is believed to be the oldest descriptions of epilepsy. On this clay tablet (626–539 BCE), ancient scholars also described supernatural associations of specific seizure types with demons and evil gods, and how the treatment of this sacred disease was largely spiritual. For millennia, people with epilepsy were feared and treated as outcasts. Not until the 19th century did the concept of epilepsy as a brain disorder begin to disentangle aetiology and treatment from the mystical world.