Epilepsy, Ammon’s horn sclerosis, and Camille Bouchet

Abstract

ABSTRACTIncreasing interest into the relationship between Ammon’s horn sclerosis (hippocampal sclerosis) and epilepsy seems to have developed after 1880 when Sommer’s paper appeared. Bouchet and Cazauvieilh had published the original description of the hippocampal anatomical abnormality in 1825 while attempting to locate the cerebral sites of origin of epilepsy and insanity. However, they offered no interpretation of the significance of the structural change. What has sometimes not been noticed in the subsequent literature is that, after a further investigation, in 1853, Bouchet described the change in 18 of 43 additional brains from persons with epilepsy. Despite this frequency of occurrence of the hippocampal abnormality, he concluded that epileptic seizures had no single site of origin in the brain. Before most of his contemporaries and their successors, he began to propose the idea that all epileptic seizures were symptoms of various, though mostly cerebral, disorders. In doing this, he tended to be reluctant to accept the view that epilepsy was a disease in its own right.