Could valerian have been the first anticonvulsant?

To assess the available evidence for the belief that valerian, highly recommended in the past for treating epilepsy, possessed real anticonvulsant effectiveness.Review of available literature.In 1592, Fabio Colonna, in his botanical classic Phytobasanos, reported that taking powdered valerian root cured his own epilepsy. Subsequent reports of valerian's anticonvulsant effectiveness appeared. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was often regarded as the best available treatment for the disorder. Valerian preparations yield isovaleric acid, a substance analogous to valproic acid and likely to possess anticonvulsant properties, as isovaleramide does. In favorable circumstances, high valerian doses can be calculated to have sometimes provided potentially effective amounts of anticonvulsant substance for epilepsy patients.Valerian probably did possess the potential for an anticonvulsant effect, but the uncertain chemical composition and content of valerian preparations, and their odor and taste, made it unlikely that they could ever prove satisfactory in widespread use

Victor Horsley's contribution to Jacksonian epileptology

To describe Victor Horsley's contribution to John Hughlings Jackson's understanding of the mechanisms involved in the generalization of convulsive epileptic seizures.I reviewed Horsley's writings and other relevant late 19th century medical literature.Horsley's combination of strategically sited surgical lesions and cerebral cortex stimulation studies in experimental animals showed that, contrary to Hughlings Jackson's earlier belief, epileptic activity arising in one cerebral hemisphere had to spread to the contralateral hemisphere before bilateral convulsing could occur.On the basis of well-designed experiments, Horsley made a major contribution to the understanding of epileptic seizure propagation mechanisms

The Role of Focal Epilepsy in the Development of Jacksonian Localization

Abstract In the 1860s John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) reasoned on theoretical grounds that voluntary movements probably were represented in the human cerebral cortex. He then studied the clinical phenomenologies and pathological associations of human focal motor epileptic seizures, post-epileptic hemiplegia and aphasia, and also chorea. From these various lines of evidence he concluded by 1870 that voluntary movement of the face and upper limb on the opposite side were represented in a localized area of the human cerebral cortex overlying the corpus striatum. He recognized this shortly before the physiologists demonstrated such cortical localization of function in experimental animals. Over the following three decades, Jackson analyzed the spread of focal motor epileptic seizure activity, and the phenomenology of other types of epileptic seizure in humans, and related this knowledge to the sites of the brain pathology that appeared responsible for these events. This enabled him to locate cerebral cortical sites for the representation of foot movement, consciousness, and various aspects of special sensory function, as well as for certain psychic phenomena that arose from temporal lobe paroxysmal disturbance