The epilepsy of Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

Abstract

Over 100 years ago, on the 27th of January 1881, Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky died. Since that time, many biographies, monographs, memoirs, and, to a lesser extent, articles in the medical literature have discussed the fact that Dostoevsky was a patient with epilepsy. An attempt is made here to integrate the details of his illness into a medical case history, as we now do for every patient who visits a physician for the first time. The information pertinent to the case history includes: a description of all seizures, frequency of seizures, provocative factors, course of the disease, treatment, and family history. Even though we do not have the benefits of the results of electroencephalography (invented by Hans Berger in 1929), classification of the type of epilepsy Dostoevsky had is attempted. The existence or absence of the so-called ecstatic aura is crucial to such classification. Based on the data, it is likely that Dostoevsky suffered from partial complex epilepsy with secondarily generalized nocturnal seizures rather than primary generalized epilepsy.