ellauri042.html on line 697: Dostoevsky´s literary work has strong autobiographical elements. We know from him that he suffered from hallucinations already in early childhood. He presented idiotic characters with confused views about freedom of choice, religion, socialism, atheism, good and evil. Many of his characters suffered – like the author himself – from epilepsy. Other famous people also suffered from epilepsy (Alexander the Great, Caesar, Gustave Flaubert, and Lord Byron). Flaubert had religiously tinted visions. The first 2 guys thought they were gods.
ellauri042.html on line 701: In 1833, the family moved to Tula where the father bought a manor. Shortly after the death of his mother in 1837, Fyodor (16 yrs) was sent to St. Petersburg where he entered the Army Engineering College. 2 years later, in 1839, Dostoevsky´s more and more tyrannical father died, probably of apoplexy, but there were strong rumours that he was murdered by his own serfs in a quarrel. (Unless it was Fedja who dunit.) Against the background of this legend, Sigmund Freud later interpreted the patricide in the novel “The brothers Karamazov” as showing Fedja hated his father´s guts. True, but the main thing was the epilepsy, wait and see.
ellauri042.html on line 719: Dostoevsky´s favorite word was “vdrug” (“suddenly”). A lot of events in Dostoevsky´s novels begin suddenly, without preparations and explanation – like seizures. (But he did at times have a manic aura just before.) Dostoevsky also used frequent repetitions of the same word with different intonations. It made an impression of convulsions and shocked the literary critics. He wrote in a meticulous manner, using every empty space of a sheet (see Fig. 2). His style showed a tendency toward extensive and in some cases compulsive writing, and the writings were often concerned with moral, ethical, or religious issues. This may reflect a syndrome of interictal behavior changes that was described in temporal lobe epilepsy by Waxman and Geschwind.
ellauri042.html on line 726: Interictal (kohtausten välinen) behaviour abnormalities in temporal lobe epilepsy have been discussed by many authors. There is clear evidence of a temporal lobe epilepsy personality syndrome including a deepening of emotionality with a serious, highly ethical, and spiritual demeanour and an interictal dysphoric disorder.
ellauri042.html on line 728: Bear and Fedio described typical interictal findings in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy including hyperreligiosity, euphoria, depression, hypergraphy, hypo- or hypermoralism, interest in philosophical questions, altered sexual behaviour, paranoia, consciousness of guilt, and emotional alteration.
ellauri042.html on line 732: In conclusion, the exact classification of Dostoevsky´s idiocy is pretty clear. Many signs indicate that this famous writer suffered from mesial temporal lobe epilepsy.
ellauri100.html on line 40: Weighing up evidence, including his many letters, they analyzed competing theories that he had suffered from illnesses including epilepsy, cycloid psychosis, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder. The panel concluded that the most probable diagnosis was more prosaic.
ellauri100.html on line 51: Although van Gogh was diagnosed with epilepsy at the time, definitions had changed, Oderwald said. Ultimately, “one single thing cannot explain the entire picture of what happened to van Gogh,” he said.
ellauri160.html on line 637: According to the Zohar, after Cain kills Abel, Adam separates from Eve for 130 years. During this time, Lilith and Naamah seduce him and bear his demonic children, who became the Plagues of Mankind. She and Lilith cause epilepsy in children.
ellauri180.html on line 198: By the middle of the 19th century, anaesthesia and antisepsis were rapidly changing surgical practice. The first reported circumcision in the surgical accounts of St Bartholomew's Hospital was in 1865; although this comprised only one of the 417 operations performed that year, it was clearly becoming a more common procedure. Indeed, this was a time when surgical cures were being explored for all ails and in 1878 Curling described circumcision as a cure for impotence in men who also had as associated phimosis. Many other surgeons reported circumcision as being beneficial for a diverse range of sexual problems. Walsham (1903) re-iterates the putative association of phimosis with impotence and suggests that it may also predispose to sterility, priapism, excess masturbation and even venereal disease. Warren (1915) adds epilepsy, nocturnal enuresis, night terrors and precocious sexual unrest' to the list of dangers, and this accepted catalogue of phimotic ills' is extended in American textbooks to include other aspects of sexual erethisms' such as homosexuality.
ellauri180.html on line 224: Literary assaults such as these have served to fuel the debates and even a Medline® search today reveals that in the last year alone, 155 reviews or letters have been published arguing for or against routine circumcision. However, studying the evolution of the medical indications provides us with a pleasing demonstration of how controversy drives scientific enquiry. We have already described how the surgeons of 100 years ago advocated circumcision for a wide variety of conditions, such as impotence, nocturnal enuresis, sterility, excess masturbation, night terrors, epilepsy, etc. There can be no doubt that a large element of surgical self-interest drove these claims. However, most of the contemporary textbooks also included epithelioma (carcinoma) of the penis amidst the morass of complications of phimosis. Although rare, once this observation had been made, it presumably filtered down through the textbooks by rote, rather than scientific study. A few reports had appeared in the early 20th century indicating that carcinoma of the penis was rare in circumcised men, but not until the debate over neonatal circumcision erupted in the medical press in the 1930s that this surgical `mantra' was put to the test. In 1932, the editor of the Lancet challenged Abraham Wolbarst, a New York urologist, to prove his contention (in a previous Lancet editorial), that circumcision prevented penile carcinoma. Wolbarst responded by surveying every skin, cancer and Jewish hospital in the USA, along with 1250 of the largest general hospitals throughout the Union. With this survey, he was able to show that penile cancer virtually never occurred in circumcised men and that the risk related to the timing of the circumcision. Over the years this association has been reaffirmed by many research workers, although general hygiene, demographic and other factors such as human papilloma virus and smoking status are probably just as important. However, Wolbarst established that association through formal scientific enquiry and proponents of the procedure continue to use this as a compelling argument for circumcision at birth.
ellauri223.html on line 90: And in other ways they labor to cure the epilepsy, with which they are often troubled. G.M. A sign this disease is of wonderful cleverness, for from it Hercules, Scrotus, Socrates, Callimachus, and Mahomet have suffered. This they cure by means of prayers to heaven, by strengthening the head, by taking acid, by planned gymnastics, and with fat cheese-bread sprinkled with the flour of wheaten corn. My, that is yummy, I tell you.
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