Roman name: _morbus comitialis_ (crowd sickness).

In mediæval times, sufferers were regarded with awe, as being possessed by
a spirit. Witch doctors among savages, and founders and expounders of
differing creeds among more civilized peoples, have taken advantage of this
infirmity to claim divine inspiration, and the power of "seeing visions"
and prophesying.

Epilepsy has always interested medical men because of its frequency, the
difficulty of tracing its cause, and its obstinacy to treatment, while it
has appealed to popular imagination by the appalling picture of bodily
overthrow it presents, so that many gross superstitions have grown up
around it.

The description in Mark ix. 17-29, is interesting:

"Master, I have brought Thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit. And
wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth
with his teeth, and pineth away: ... straightway the spirit tare him;
and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.

"And He asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him?
And he said, Of a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire,
and into the waters, to destroy him.

"And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by
prayer and fasting."

Up to the present, epilepsy can be ascribed to no specific disease of the
brain, the symptoms being due to some morbid disturbance in its action.