At the time of this article, the cause of Ted Kennedy’s seizure is unfortunately a malignant brain tumor, though most people who’ve had seizures (and aren’t previous victims of stroke) don’t always get a definitive answer of what the cause was. Medications usually help keep it under control and they usually don’t have to worry about it too much afterward unless they’re true severe epileptics who get attacks off and on no matter what medications they’re taking. But you’d be amazed at how many creative artists in the past had strange seizures when they weren’t really epileptics. The type of seizures they had were called temporal lobe seizures due to some kind of brief or recurring impairment of the temporal lobe region of the brain.
And while not a constant, that type of seizure was brought on by drinking too much alcohol or reactions from alcohol withdrawal.
It may not be surprising to you then that a bevy of famous writers, creative artists and even religious leaders of the past had temporal lobe seizures more than once caused by alcoholism or unknown factors. Almost always after coming out of a seizure, they’d experience a sense of heightened awareness, seeing vivid colors and general wild emotional states that might be considered manic behavior in a bipolar person. Just who were these people? Well, a few names might not be all that surprising when you realize they’re some of the best known creative artists of all time, however disturbing to some…
Lewis Carroll (or Charles Dodgson to scholars) was said to experience temporal lobe seizures, though possibly mostly due to alcoholic problems. Then again, nobody really knows for sure if there was one thing that provoked them, but historians on Carroll say that his frequent migraines would sometimes trip them off. Certainly most writers would get a migraine if they managed to concoct the “Alice” books and the complex mathematical conundrums so effectively parlayed into the text. But one has to wonder whether Carroll’s seizures put him into a heightened state of creativity that was akin to having a drug trip. No wonder the “Alice” books (and movies) became more popular during the 1960’s when the drug culture was everywhere.
Apparently Edgar Allen Poe had temporal lobe seizures, also due to alcoholism. It doesn’t have to be said his state of mind while creating his masterful and dark poems. When you hear about how the time following one of these seizures is supposed to bring a sense of creative bliss, it must also offer a flip side depending on one’s temperament. Heightened creativity obviously doesn’t have to incite overly positive thoughts. Many people, however, experienced (and still experience) mostly negative feelings before going into one of these seizures.
Fyodor Dostoevsky actually put four epileptic characters into his novels (Prince Myshkin in “The Idiot” probably the most famous) and that’s because Dostoevsky had an inherited form of epilepsy. No alcoholism was to be had here, though he still experienced what can be described as a strange heightened awareness before going into one of his seizures. Even Dostoevsky couldn’t quite put it into words what he was experiencing in his head before going into a seizure. And that’s made the temporal lobe seizure continually mysterious for the last 100 years. If you’re a writer of Dostoevsky’s caliber and having profound visions before doing your work from seizures, there isn’t any doubt then that these things create various phenomena in the brain that’s unlike anything else.
Because of that heightened awareness some people get following a temporal lobe seizure, there’s been a controversial connection to religious leaders and how some of their personal visions may have been induced by a seizure. Not all neurologists agree with the connection of religious experiences with seizures, though. A related condition called Geschwind Syndrome that causes people to exhibit various kinds of excessive behavior following a temporal lobe seizure is said to be behind these kinds of experiences.
Was it the cause of visions with someone such as the Muslim Prophet Muhammad–all because he was said by an ancient Christian scholar (Theophanes) to be epileptic? Muslim historians refute this and it may actually be a strange battle of right and wrong between Christians and Muslims with the oddball subject of epilepsy in the middle. Nobody probably could have guessed epilepsy to be the main subject behind the legitimacy of a revered prophet and war of words between two major religions.
The revered of Joan of Arc was said to suffer from something similar to epilepsy, despite never being completely known for sure. It may explain away her visions, but bringing that up as the reason behind them is still controversial today with people who still revere her in France. A lot of scholars who’ve studied Joan of Arc say it could have been any number of things that affected her brain instead of epilepsy, and it’s a convenient way to explain a lot of behavior in historical figures when dozens of different illnesses caused strange cerebral phenomena.
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So many more legendary people were said to suffer from temporal lobe seizures–including unconfirmed reports of everybody from Aristotle to Julius Caesar just to name two having similar problems. Despite the cause being a brain tumor, will Ted Kennedy now join the ranks of great people who suffered from a form of seizure from illness? Some people might not consider him great just out of political derision. But he’s done more important things politically than most of his peers and will eventually go down as one of the greatest senators of the last fifty years who tried (and actually accomplished) to get something done.
Maybe the fact that he sounded so good on the phone to his fellow senators following his seizure and while in the hospital figures into a heightened state of awareness he experienced afterward. His fellow senators could certainly use a heightened state of awareness, but just not through what Kennedy now has…
