A powerful memoir of the author’s brother tells the story of a condition whose sufferers were killed in the middle ages for communicating with the devil Raphael’s _The Transfiguration_ is a depiction of epilepsy that pulls no punches: a lofted Christ soars on an illuminated cloud, while a boy with rolling eyes and flailing limbs is supported by his father. Raphael’s painting is a reference to the Gospel of Mark, chapter nine, in which Jesus descends from transfiguration to cure a boy of the “foul spirit” causing his seizures. “Epilepsy” is a Greek word, meaning “to be seized upon”, and the illness has long been viewed as evidence of connection between human and spiritual realms. The earliest Greek medical writings by Hippocrates are half a millennium older than the gospels, and though they call epilepsy “the sacred disease” they offer a more humane portrait of the condition: “I do not believe that the ‘sacred disease’ is any more divine or sacred than any other disease,” Hippocrates wrote. “Because it is completely different from other diseases, it has been regarded as a divine visitation by those who, being only human, view it with ignorance and astonishment.” Continue reading...
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