Abstracts

Rationale: At different times and in different cultures, the epileptic seizure has been perceived as a death, an idea shared by many patients and families, by parents in particular. By contrast, the conception of death differs considerably throughout mankind.Methods: Material from interviews, statements, publications, books, patients’ paintings explores the personal experience of near death. This is compared to the metaphysics of death in art history, literature, paintings, and archeologyResults: Some patients fear death in cases of an epileptic aura or when emerging from an epileptic seizure. We cite a scenario written by a patient with epilepsy for a film about this experience but some years later he felt that a seizure is more like a rebirth. – Parents we cite often fear imminent death in cases of a generalized seizure of their child. The Inca named epilepsy “Wind of the dead” or “disease of the dead”, the Maya “pseudo-death”, the Aztec called medicines against epilepsy “medicine or herb of the dead"", ""medicine of those who are dying"". In China, Cao (Tsao) Yuan Fang, of the Sui Dynasty (610 AD), wrote the following about Yang epilepsy, one of the five types of epilepsy: “During the attack, the patient appears as if dead, becomes incontinent, and then recovers spontaneously in a few moments”. In Swahili, an African native language in Tanganyika, Kifafa is the designation of epilepsy and it means “half dead and stiff”. The Christian scholar of the Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas wrote ""those labouring under the falling sickness who are quasi dead . . . The knowledge of our death is the true fruit of the « tree of knowledge », a fruit that worries man and spurs cultural creation. But what is death? The absence of knowledge about what comes after life, contrasts with the myriad of opinions expressed about it. We present the idea of death as a nadir leading to rebirth in the myth of Hyakintos, in Raffaello’s painting The Transfiguration, the idea of a return to the mother’s womb in Egyptian sarcophaguses and funeral jars found on the island of Lipari, Italy. - The epileptic patient “rises from death”. Apart from sleep – hypnos is in Greek mythology thanatos, the little brother – epileptic seizure is the only human experience where a person recovers from apparent death, hence the interpretation of supernatural qualities.Conclusions: When listening to person with epileptic seizures, the physician should be aware of the fear of death felt by many. The meaning of death is very different for the individual person and the belief of continued existence after death can be extremely varied and influenced by the cultural context a patient is living in.