[Dostoevsky's epileptic experiences and his descriptions of epilepsy in the mirror of modern neurology].

Abstract

The aim of the study is to present Fyodor Mihailovich Dostoevsky's epilepsy through the results of the related historical and contemporary medical literature, further, to show how the illness is reflected in the writer's biographical data and in the famous patient characters displayed in his great romans. Nowadays it is well presumed that the writer could have had temporal lobe epilepsy with secondary generalized seizures, the symptoms of which he by no means was producing throughout his life. This can be tracked easily by his own descriptions of his seizures, from the memories of his wife and his contemporaries, as well as the symptoms of his epileptic characters in his novels. This theme has been widely dealt with by neurologists, epileptologists and literary experts all over the world. Author details the literature research, the related works and establishes her own concept concerning Dostoevsky's epilepsy.