E. H. Sieveking and his cephalalgia epileptica

ABSTRACT

Edward Henry Sieveking (1816–1904) was a professionally successful and well respected nineteenth-century London physician who, over the span of some half a century, continuously held appointment to British royalty, including Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. In 1858, he published a monograph On Epilepsy and Epileptiform Seizures, with a second edition in 1861. In both editions, he described an entity cephalalgia epileptica that comprised the occurrence of headache in association with phenomena that resembled the premonitory symptom of some epileptic seizures. However, the sufferers did not have epilepsy, in that they did not experience generalized convulsions. Sieveking, like most of his British contemporaries, had little awareness of the existence of the variety of migraine phenomena apart from headache itself. In retrospect, it seems likely that migraine with aura probably was the main basis of the disorder Sieveking designated, one that later may have been termed migralepsy.

KEYWORDS:

• Aura
• cephalalgia epileptica
• migraine
• migralepsy
• Sieveking

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Ethical considerations

All material discussed is historical.

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Funding

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