Gottfried Benn, a German Poet-Physician, on Epilepsy in 1910-1911

In the second half of the 19th century, new scientific concepts of the etiology and nature of epilepsy emerged that challenged metaphysical views on epilepsy held since antiquity. 1 In 1910, Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), who would become a well-known German poet, was a medical student at the famous Charite Hospital of Friedrich Wilhelm University (Berlin, Germany). He offered a contemporary perspective on the dramatic evolution of epilepsy theory in his brief report, A Contribution to the History of Psychiatry. 2 A year later, Benn's study on The Etiology of Pubertal Epilepsy 3 received the gold medal from the medical faculty of the university. Both publications are briefly reviewed here. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief glimpse of European ideas on epilepsy at the beginning of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of Gottfried Benn, a German poet-physician who became particularly interested in pubertal epilepsy. It was during this period that epilepsy began to be seen as a neurologic rather than a psychiatric disorder.