Abstract
The epilepsy study of John Huhlings Jackson is being reveiwed and commented on from the perspective of its brilliant contributions to present-day epileptology. His key insights are summarized as follows:
He has challenged the reasonless distinction between true epilepsy (“genuine” epilepsy of authorities) and epileptiform convulsions (Bravis-Jacksonian epilepsy) and abandoned it as an unviable theory. True epilepsy was removed from its provileged position as one epilepsy and degraded to one of the epilepsies. A new conception of epilepsy is constructed by Jackson which includes true epilepsy, epileptiform convulsions and other varities of epilepsies. This new conception of epilepsy is based on his definition of epilepsy: epilepsy is the name for occasional, sudden, excessive, rapid and local discharges of grey matter. There are various pathological causes of epilepsy and many different patterns of epileptic seizures, so in this meaning epilepsy is not singular but plural. As the International Classification of the International League Againat Epilepsy in 1985 proposed, there are clinical manifestations of various epilepsies and epileptic syndromes. Epilepsy, nonetheless, is singular, because every epilepsy, if it be epilepsy, has one functional nervous disorder, that is, “excessive discharges of grey matter”, according to Jacison's paradigm. The raison d'etr of epileptology should be sought at this point.
