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Kimford J. Meador, MD

Arch Neurol. 1999;56:629-630.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Premodern Era of Epilepsy Surgery

Evidence of skull trephinations with survival date from the Neolithic period. Sir Victor Horsley¹ suggested that the trephinations might have been performed for relief of Jacksonian epilepsy. However, the first account of surgery specifically for epilepsy was by Divetus² (1527-1586):

A bone of the skull of a twelve-year-old youth had been broken and depressed by a fall and had by negligence not been restored. The brain was therefore hindered in its growth, since the injured bone itself could not grow so as to become able to hold a larger brain. Consequently in his eighteenth year the youth suffered from epilepsy because of the oppression of the brain. He was, however, cured by perforation of the depressed bone, for thus the oppression of the brain was removed.

Beginning of the Modern Era: Victor Horsley and Colleagues

From the Department of Neurology, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta.