The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Softshell Books)

Rating:
Summary: A Timid Author With a Powerful Story
Review: From the viewpoint of the disability activist, the only major work on the history of epilepsy should be a civil rights book about the mistreatment of a minority group since ancient times. Dr Temkin will only admit that people with epilepsy have always been "objects of horror and disgust". Beyond that point his book is 2500 years of intellectual history, too much of it elaborate details of long discredited theories. Yet the author's research is so outstanding and his bibliography of 1120 books and articles so complete that anything less than a 5 star rating would be improper. Dr Temkin deserves special credit for uncovering Richard Caton's 1875 article "The Electric Discharges of the Brain". In 2001 the Medieval Madness Syndrome continues of people with epilepsy being rejected by family, friends, and employers because they have a "deliberately chosen illness". Our timid author declines to ask how this could be true 126 years after the actual cause of epilepsy was discovered. But his research demands an answer to that question.