List of People With Epilepsy

List Of People With Epilepsy

This is a list of notable people who have, or had, the medical condition epilepsy. Following from that, there is a short list of people who have received a speculative, retrospective diagnosis of epilepsy. Finally there is a substantial list of people who are often wrongly believed to have had epilepsy.

A possible link between epilepsy and greatness has fascinated biographers and physicians for centuries. In his Treatise on Epilepsy, the French 17th century physician Jean Taxil refers to Aristotle's "famous epileptics". This list includes Hercules, Ajax, Bellerophon, Socrates, Plato, Empedocles, Maracus of Syracuse, and the Sibyls. However, historian of medicine Owsei Temkin argues that Aristotle had in fact made a list of melancholics and had only associated Hercules with the "Sacred Disease". Taxil goes on to add his own names: Roman Emperor Caligula, Drusus (tribune of the Roman people), Muhammad, and Petrarch.

More recently, many saints and other religious figures have been suspected of having had temporal lobe epilepsy. J.E. Bryant's 1953 book, Genius and Epilepsy, has a list of more than 20 people that combines the great and the mystical. Recent scholars are more skeptical. Neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick is amongst those who question the widespread labeling of religious figures with temporal lobe epilepsy. He believes this may "owe more to the enthusiasm of their authors than to the true scientific understanding" In a recent detailed review of the subject, neurologist John Hughes concluded that the majority of famous people alleged to have epilepsy did not in fact have this condition.