Discovering Epilepsy and Epileptics in Victorian London

This chapter focuses on the sociological analysis of the medical files of John Hughlings Jackson’s epileptic patients, who were hospitalized at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, during the period 1870–1895. More particularly, following their chronological presentation in the previous chapter, this chapter examines and evaluates qualitatively epileptic patients’ gender, age, marital status, occupation and address of residence. It attempts to inscribe them within the general historical context of nineteenth-century English society, as well as within the dominant nineteenth-century medical/neurological discourse. From this perspective, it also proceeds to a comparative juxtaposition with the medical files of two private asylums, the Manor House Asylum and the Holloway Sanatorium, in order to indicate the significant differentiations between public and private institutions, as well as between a neurological hospital and a (mental) asylum. Additionally, it attempts to explore epileptic patients’ thoughts and intimate feelings, and to delineate doctors’ and nurses’ attitude towards them, so as to enable the construction of a history of epilepsy “from below”. © 2015, Springer International Publishing Switzerland