Epilepsy and insanity during the early 19th century. A conceptual history
G. E. Berrios
During the first half of the 19th century, epilepsy and the insanities were
considered as closely related "neurotic" disorders. Under the influence of
factors such as the decline of the 18th-century Cullean concept of
neurosis, the development of the new descriptive psychopathology, the
introduction of statistics, and the availability of longitudinal
observations of hospitalized cohorts, epilepsy was redefined as a
"neurological" disease by the 1850s. The reaction of psychiatry to the
exclusion of the mental disorder as a defining feature of epilepsy
manifested itself in the creation of the "masked epilepsy" concept. This
notion is behind the later development of categories such as "borderland"
and "equivalent," which are still of some relevance to 20th-century views
of epilepsy.
