Epilepsy through history
Old Beliefs, Folklore and ‘Cures’ for Epilepsy
For much of history, seizures were explained through religion, magic, folklore and the medical theories available at the time. Some beliefs were harmless. Others reinforced fear, stigma or dangerous treatment.
These practices are historical, not recommendations. This page describes beliefs and treatments recorded in historical and scholarly sources.
Possession, punishment and the supernatural
Ancient Mesopotamian and later European traditions often interpreted seizures as the work of gods, demons or evil spirits. Historical reviews describe epilepsy as being linked at different times with divine punishment, demonic possession, witchcraft and supernatural forces.
The dramatic nature of some seizures — sudden falls, altered awareness, cries, involuntary movements and a period of recovery — made them easy to interpret as something mysterious in cultures without a neurological explanation.
Hippocrates challenged the supernatural explanation
In the Hippocratic text On the Sacred Disease, epilepsy was argued to have a natural cause rather than being more divine than any other illness. The text linked the condition to the brain and criticised those who used religious explanations to account for it.
That did not make supernatural explanations disappear. They continued for centuries alongside medical ideas.
Blood as a supposed cure
One of the most striking documented beliefs was that fresh human blood could treat epilepsy. Historical sources report the consumption of gladiators’ blood or liver between the first and sixth centuries. After gladiatorial combat disappeared, the blood of executed people — particularly those who had been beheaded — was sometimes treated as a substitute.
Reports of this practice survived into much later European history. Scholars have suggested that spontaneous remission or natural variation in seizures may have helped sustain the illusion that the practice worked.
Scandinavian folk beliefs
Research on Norway and Sweden records beliefs that epilepsy could be caused by hidden beings thought to live in woods and mountains. Some remedies were based on symbolically returning the illness to the earth, including passing the affected person through a hole or natural opening.
Fresh blood from criminals was also described in Scandinavian folk tradition as having supposed antiepileptic power.
Religious, magical, animal and plant remedies
A review of Italian folk medicine from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century identified 78 different epilepsy remedies. These included magical practices, religious practices, animal-derived remedies, plant remedies and other natural preparations.
Not every old remedy was necessarily biologically meaningless. Some plants used in folk medicine may contain compounds capable of affecting the nervous system. But historical use alone is not evidence that a remedy was safe or effective, and many practices were based on superstition rather than tested medicine.
Strange causes people once blamed
Historical Polish medical sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries listed supposed causes including imbalances of bodily humours, excessive eating or drinking, teething, spoiled milk, poison, fever, cold air and even moonlight. Treatments included bloodletting, laxatives and preparations such as ground human skull.
These ideas show that what counted as ‘medical’ and what counted as ‘folk belief’ were not always clearly separated. Physicians themselves sometimes worked within theories that were later shown to be wrong.
Why these stories matter now
Old beliefs can leave long shadows. Ideas about possession, danger, contagion, moral weakness or mystery did not vanish the moment neurology advanced. Historical misconceptions helped shape social stigma, exclusion and fear around epilepsy.
Looking at these beliefs is not about mocking people in the past. It is about understanding how humans tried to explain something they did not yet understand — and how some explanations caused harm.
Sources
PubMed — Hallmarks in the history of epilepsy: epilepsy in antiquity
PubMed — Between horror and hope: gladiator’s blood as a cure for epileptics in ancient medicine
PubMed — Traditional folk beliefs on epilepsy in Norway and Sweden
PubMed — Treating epilepsy in Italy between XIX and XX century
PubMed — Treating epilepsy: a review of Polish historical sources