Folk remedies often turn out to have been scientifically sound; the histories of aspirin and quinine are just two examples. But it’s difficult to see how some of the supposed cures for epilepsy could ever have been trusted, or indeed willingly endured, by the unfortunate patient.
A number of them are associated with blood, guts and death – the more gruesome the better. Hans Christian Andersen reports seeing parents forcing their epileptic children to drink the blood spouting from the necks of beheaded criminals in the belief that they would thereby be healed. In Roman times epileptics were offered pieces of liver cut from the bodies of stabbed gladiators. In Celtic regions, the treatment of choice was grated skull from a person of the opposite sex. In Scotland the water from a well in Wester Ross was recommended, provided it was drunk from the skull of a suicide.
A particularly elaborate remedy, which sounds like a recipe from the witches of Macbeth, advised epileptics to drink blood obtained from an incision in their left foot, then to make up a number of parcels containing their toe and finger nail clippings, along with some hairs from their eyebrows and moustaches. These parcels were to be buried along with the knots from a rope which had been laid out in the form of a cross, while at the spot where the first fit took place a black cock was interred. The final step was for the patient to drink water from a human skull.
Equally unsavoury were eating food mixed with menstrual blood, pouring cow urine into the ear, and drinking water used to wash a corpse. An emergency measure to be adopted while a fit was in progress was to pass a worm macerated in alcohol down the patient’s throat and pull it out again.
Some remedies depended on circumstances whose appearance seems so unlikely as to be almost impossible – for example, two pieces of coal from under the roots of a red wormwood plant, one of which was to be eaten, the other worn round the neck? How many wormwood plants would one have to unearth before finding two pieces of coal nestling underneath?
Some measures were prophylactic: an amulet made from the backbone of a rattlesnake, a medal made from coffin handles, a piece of rope which had been used by someone to hang himself. For babies, lifelong protection was guaranteed by rubbing it with a newly-born pig. At last we can see a glimmer of reasoning perhaps. Could this have been based on the incident with Christ and the Gadarene swine?
Natural and herbal remedies abound. A popular one was mistletoe, the rationale for this being that, as it clings to the tops of trees, never falling to the ground, it would surely provide protection against the ‘falling sickness’.
Yet, as with aspirin and quinine, it seems that one of those remedies may be scientifically sound after all. The root of the delphinium denudatum, which grows in the Himalayas and has been used for centuries by people in the area to control seizures, is currently being researched by Canadian neuroscientist Michael Poulter. It is, says Poulter, the most promising agent he has studied so far. Given that around 30% of epileptics are resistant to the drugs currently available this space will be eagerly watched.
A number of them are associated with blood, guts and death – the more gruesome the better. Hans Christian Andersen reports seeing parents forcing their epileptic children to drink the blood spouting from the necks of beheaded criminals in the belief that they would thereby be healed. In Roman times epileptics were offered pieces of liver cut from the bodies of stabbed gladiators. In Celtic regions, the treatment of choice was grated skull from a person of the opposite sex. In Scotland the water from a well in Wester Ross was recommended, provided it was drunk from the skull of a suicide.
A particularly elaborate remedy, which sounds like a recipe from the witches of Macbeth, advised epileptics to drink blood obtained from an incision in their left foot, then to make up a number of parcels containing their toe and finger nail clippings, along with some hairs from their eyebrows and moustaches. These parcels were to be buried along with the knots from a rope which had been laid out in the form of a cross, while at the spot where the first fit took place a black cock was interred. The final step was for the patient to drink water from a human skull.
Equally unsavoury were eating food mixed with menstrual blood, pouring cow urine into the ear, and drinking water used to wash a corpse. An emergency measure to be adopted while a fit was in progress was to pass a worm macerated in alcohol down the patient’s throat and pull it out again.
Some remedies depended on circumstances whose appearance seems so unlikely as to be almost impossible – for example, two pieces of coal from under the roots of a red wormwood plant, one of which was to be eaten, the other worn round the neck? How many wormwood plants would one have to unearth before finding two pieces of coal nestling underneath?
Some measures were prophylactic: an amulet made from the backbone of a rattlesnake, a medal made from coffin handles, a piece of rope which had been used by someone to hang himself. For babies, lifelong protection was guaranteed by rubbing it with a newly-born pig. At last we can see a glimmer of reasoning perhaps. Could this have been based on the incident with Christ and the Gadarene swine?
Natural and herbal remedies abound. A popular one was mistletoe, the rationale for this being that, as it clings to the tops of trees, never falling to the ground, it would surely provide protection against the ‘falling sickness’.
Yet, as with aspirin and quinine, it seems that one of those remedies may be scientifically sound after all. The root of the delphinium denudatum, which grows in the Himalayas and has been used for centuries by people in the area to control seizures, is currently being researched by Canadian neuroscientist Michael Poulter. It is, says Poulter, the most promising agent he has studied so far. Given that around 30% of epileptics are resistant to the drugs currently available this space will be eagerly watched.
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