Clinical practices: Epilepsy at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, London, from 1860 to 1870

Abstract

Summary In the nineteenth century, epilepsy was established as a curable and treatable condition at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, in London, England. Since its inception, the National Hospital (NH) hosted the work of many physicians who tried to characterise and define epilepsy as a nosological entity. During the first decade of this Institution, different medical traditions, clinical practices, staff, physicians (among them, John Hughlings Jackson, Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, Jabez Spence Ramskill, and Charles Bland Radcliffe), patients, remedies, devices and publications, began to grant the National Hospital a place in London society as a special medical community. The delimitation of epilepsy at the National Hospital would have an impact on the study and description of the human nervous system at the end of the nineteenth century.