EPILEPSY, THE GREAT TEACHER

Abstract

My own approach to the study of epilepsy, and through it to the functional anatomy of the human brain, was a long journey---blind in the beginning but somewhat inevitable. I shall dcscrihe my journey as a Pilgrim’s Progress and hope you will forgive me if it seems no more than a wandering tale of personal adventure in the outset. We are told that Martin Luther was willing to ‘‘bet’’ (drum wohlte ich schier wettcn) that St. Valentine was thought to bc the patron saint of the falling disease simply because, to the German ear, St. Valcntine sounded like “der Fallenden Sucht”]. Luther himself, it is clear, had a fatal wcakncss for “heresies”. His heresics changed the history of Christendom. Rut in this case I remain unconvinced and orthodox. I prefer to believe in St. Valentine. God knows the vast army of innocent Inen and women and childrcn who suffer from cpilepsy in its many form4 has always had need of a powerful patron saint. Many cpileptics in that army arc my friends. I owe them a wonderful debt of gratitude. For this reason I have comc to Copenhagen--to pay tribute to St. Valcntine before this distinguished Society that honours him. Sir Charles Sherrington was Professor of Physiology a t Oxford whcn I was a medical student. He was always the student of function in the nervous system, always speculating on the “how” of integration. In his laboratory, questions were put to the experimental “preparation” for authoritative answer. Later, during my hospital service in Boston, 1 watched Harvey Cushing in his surgical clinic a t the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He was then demonstrating that neurosurgery could be made a rcspcctablc specialty with a low’ mortality rate. But, a t that time, it was almost exclusively the surgery of tuinours and of pain. For me, the great