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Classification of Epileptic Seizures and the Epilepsies and Drugs of Choice for Their Treatment

  • Chapter
Antiepileptic Drugs

Part of the book series: Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology ((HEP,volume 138))

Abstract

Since the beginning of the history of epileptology, the classification of the disorder has fascinated thoughtful people who were interested not only in describing individual seizures but also in enlarging the basis of fundamental knowledge by applying what was known of physiology and by inventing more advanced means of recording epileptic phenomena. Others proposed a classification, not of individual seizures, but of the conditions responsible for them. Thus Galen in the second century AD (Temkin 1971) postulated that epilepsy might be due to ‘idiopathic causes’, by which he meant that the underlying nidus of abnormality lay in the brain, but there also were ‘symptomatic epilepsies’ with their origin residing in the cardia of the stomach or elsewhere in the body.

Professor Dreifuss died shortly after submission of this paper.

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Authors
  1. F. E. Dreifuss
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  2. N. B. Fountain
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Medicine, Royal Brisbane Hospital, University of Queensland, Clinical Sciences Building, Herston, Qld., 4029, Australia

    Mervyn J. Eadie AO, MD, PhD

  2. Australian Centre for Clinical Neuropharmacology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065, Australia

    Frank J. E. Vajda M.D.

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Dreifuss, F.E., Fountain, N.B. (1999). Classification of Epileptic Seizures and the Epilepsies and Drugs of Choice for Their Treatment. In: Eadie, M.J., Vajda, F.J.E. (eds) Antiepileptic Drugs. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, vol 138. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60072-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60072-2_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-64244-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-60072-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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