40 Fun Facts About Epilepsy

Which cartoon aired a 1997 episode whose flashing red and blue lights sent hundreds of Japanese children to hospital?

Pokémon never broadcast the episode again after more than 600 viewers were taken to hospital. Only about 3% of people with epilepsy are sensitive to flashing lights.

Which saint, martyred in third-century Rome, is a patron of people with epilepsy as well as of beekeepers?

Saint Valentine was so closely tied to the condition that epilepsy was traditionally known in northern Italy as his malady.

In ancient Rome, the blood of which wounded men was drunk in the belief that it could cure epilepsy?

Gladiators gave the remedy a long afterlife: for centuries Europeans prized the fresh blood of executed criminals for the same supposed healing power.

Which colour do supporters wear each 26 March for an epilepsy awareness day begun by a nine-year-old Canadian girl?

Purple is the international colour for epilepsy, and Cassidy Megan's idea spread fast: a year after her first event, more than 100,000 students took part.

Which eating plan, later a weight-loss fashion, was first tried at the Mayo Clinic in 1921 to control epilepsy?

The ketogenic diet was built to copy the effects of fasting, an older epilepsy treatment, with meals rich in fat and almost free of carbohydrate.

According to NHS first-aid advice, what should a bystander do for someone having a convulsive seizure on the ground?

Cushion their head and move the person only if they are in danger, then turn them onto their side once the convulsions stop. Nothing should ever go in the mouth, fingers included.

Which Roman general and statesman is thought, from Plutarch's remarks about his sudden fits, to have had epilepsy?

Julius Caesar had four recorded episodes that may have been seizures, though no diagnosis made two thousand years later can be certain.

Which body part does a stubborn first-aid myth claim a person can swallow during a seizure?

The tongue cannot be swallowed, and the myth does real harm: forcing an object between a convulsing person's teeth can cause choking or injury.

From which plant does Epidiolex come, a medicine the FDA approved in 2018 for two severe childhood epilepsies?

Cannabis supplies the cannabidiol in Epidiolex, the first plant-derived form of the compound approved by US and European regulators, and one that is not intoxicating.

Which Dutch painter was told by a young hospital doctor in Arles that his attacks were a kind of epilepsy?

Vincent van Gogh came to suspect epilepsy himself, though what really ailed him is still argued over, with a long list of rival theories.

Which test, which records brain waves through electrodes on the scalp, is routinely used to help diagnose epilepsy?

An EEG taken between seizures can look normal even in people who have epilepsy, so the recording may be repeated or run for days in a monitoring unit.

Henry Molaison could form no new memories after 1953 epilepsy surgery removed most of which brain structure?

The hippocampus on both sides was largely cut out, and Molaison, known in textbooks only by his initials, was studied by memory researchers until his death in 2008.

Which word, shared with migraine, do doctors use for the odd smell or rising stomach feeling that warns of a seizure?

An aura is really a small seizure in its own right, confined to one part of the brain, which is why its form hints at where the trouble starts.

Roughly how many people worldwide have epilepsy, nearly 80% of them in low- and middle-income countries?

Around 50 million people have epilepsy, and the World Health Organization estimates that up to 70% of them could live free of seizures with proper diagnosis and treatment.

Which American abolitionist had seizures for the rest of her life after an overseer's thrown weight broke her skull?

Harriet Tubman was hit as a girl by a metal weight aimed at another slave, and took the vivid visions that followed the injury to be messages from God.

Which Minneapolis pop star, known by a single name, said he was born epileptic and had seizures as a boy?

Prince recalled telling his mother as a child that he would not be sick any more, because an angel had told him so.

Which Greek physician argued in On the Sacred Disease that epilepsy came from the brain, not the gods?

Hippocrates accused those who blamed the gods of spreading ignorance through superstitious magic, and treated the illness as something medicine could address.

Which Oscar-winning actress starred in First Do No Harm, a 1997 TV film about a boy whose epilepsy is eased by diet?

Meryl Streep made the film for director Jim Abrahams, whose own son Charlie's severe epilepsy had been brought under control the same way.

Which everyday symptom sets off the childhood seizures that mostly strike between six months and five years of age?

Fever is the trigger, which is why doctors call them febrile seizures, and frightening as they look, most children simply outgrow them without going on to develop epilepsy.

After how long does NHS first-aid advice say a continuing seizure needs an ambulance?

5 minutes is the cut-off because most seizures stop by themselves in under two, and one that runs on can cause lasting harm to the brain.

Which lobe of the brain, vital for long-term memory, is the commonest starting point for focal epilepsy in adults?

The temporal lobe gives its seizures a strange flavour, often opening with a rising feeling in the stomach, a sudden wave of fear or an odd taste or smell.

A pacemaker-like device implanted under the collarbone treats stubborn epilepsy by sending pulses to which nerve?

The vagus nerve is normally wired on the left side of the neck, because the right branch helps to control the heart and stimulating it could upset the heartbeat.

Which band of nerve fibres joining the brain's two halves do surgeons cut to stop severe seizures spreading?

Cutting the corpus callosum was first tried in the 1940s, and the patients who had it became famous in psychology as the split-brain cases.

Which epilepsy drug, once only a lab solvent, is tightly restricted because it can cause birth defects in pregnancy?

Valproate showed its power by accident in 1962, when a French researcher was using it merely as the liquid to carry other compounds he was testing.

Which French term was long the everyday name for a tonic-clonic seizure, the most dramatic convulsive kind?

Grand mal is French for great sickness, an echo of the great disease, the plain label some ancient Greek doctors preferred to calling the condition sacred.

Which type of seizure, most common in children, shows as brief staring spells that are often mistaken for inattention?

Absence seizures can strike anywhere from a few to hundreds of times a day, so a child may struggle to concentrate at school long before anyone suspects epilepsy.

Which parasite, spread by poor sanitation, does the WHO call the most frequent preventable cause of epilepsy?

The pork tapeworm does its damage when its larvae lodge in the brain, and it is blamed for about 30% of epilepsy cases in the countries where it is entrenched.

Which Russian novelist, who had epilepsy himself, wrote his own seizures into the novel The Idiot?

Fyodor Dostoevsky poured his own ordeals into the book, from his seizures to the mock execution he once faced, and had four attacks in a single month in 1877.

Which sudden illness is a major cause of epilepsy in older adults, with up to one survivor in ten developing it?

Stroke most often brings on epilepsy within the first few years, and the risk is highest after severe bleeds that damage the brain's outer layer, the cortex.

Which Olympic host city pulled animated footage from its jagged logo's launch after viewers reported seizures?

London organisers stressed that the logo itself was not to blame: the offending clip showed a diver entering a pool with a multi-coloured ripple effect.

Which German psychiatrist, drawn to medicine by an apparent telepathic episode, first recorded human brain waves?

Hans Berger made the recording in 1924 but doubted it so much that he waited five years to publish, and German medicine then met it with incredulity and derision.

Which salt, championed by Sir Charles Locock in 1857, became the first effective drug treatment for epilepsy?

Potassium bromide worked for the wrong reason: Locock shared the belief that epilepsy sprang from sexual excitement, and chose the salt because it calmed desire.

Which ancient civilisation left the oldest known detailed account of epilepsy, a medical text from about 1050 BC?

Babylonian healers described the seizures in careful detail but blamed them on possession by evil spirits, and prescribed spiritual cures to match.

Which brain chemical, the chief calming signal between nerve cells, do many anti-seizure drugs work by boosting?

GABA acts as the brain's brake, lowering the excitability of nerve cells, so drugs that strengthen it make the runaway firing behind a seizure less likely.

Which everyday pleasure triggers seizures in a rare reflex epilepsy that neurologist Macdonald Critchley named in 1937?

Music that sets off these seizures is usually very specific and emotionally charged for the listener, and merely thinking of the piece may be enough.

Status epilepticus, a medical emergency treated first with benzodiazepines, describes what kind of seizure?

One that will not stop can injure the brain for good, and between 10% and 30% of people who go into status epilepticus die within 30 days.

Which part of the mouth can become enlarged as a well-known side effect of the anti-seizure drug phenytoin?

Gums are not the only thing that grows on phenytoin, which came into use in 1938: increased hair growth is another of its common side effects.

In which Canadian city did Wilder Penfield found a brain institute and pioneer epilepsy surgery on awake patients?

Montreal gave its name to his procedure, in which patients kept conscious under local anaesthetic reported what they felt as he probed the surface of the brain.

Gelastic seizures, often caused by a benign growth in the hypothalamus, produce sudden bursts of what?

Laughter with no apparent cause is the hallmark, and because it can pass for the ordinary kind the condition may go undiagnosed for years; gelos is Greek for laughter.

Which sedative drug, discovered in 1912, is the oldest anti-seizure medicine still in common use?

Phenobarbital is also among the cheapest of the anti-seizure drugs, which is why the World Health Organization recommends it as a first choice in the developing world.