The threshold of the new epileptology: Dr Lennox at the London Congress, 1935

By the time that Dr William Lennox presented his discovery of the diagnostic electrical signature of brain electrical activity in epileptic seizures at the 2nd International Neurology Congress, held in London in 1935, research in epileptology had become mired in conceptual confusion. Not only had the vain quest for extracerebral seizure triggers resulted in decades of negative research, but outré theories such as autointoxication and psychoanalysis had severely damaged and confused the conceptual approach to this condition. Lennox and the Harvard team, in applying the novel technology of electroencephalography helped to clear up this confusion radically. His landmark contribution and the confusion into which epilepsy research had been diverted at that time, is worthy of examination--for this was indeed the threshold of new era of epileptology.