INTRODUCTION: The history of the epilepsy studies the medical knowledge with their contradictions and increments, here presented in a European point of view. The related literature is rich and extensive. METHODOLOGY: Narrative review based on epilepsy historical facts in an epistemologic perspective. OBJECTIVES: To present an overview of the evolution of the knowledge and of facts in elapsing of almost 2300 years from Hippocrates to middles of the XIX century, in the turn point of the modern epileptology that has as symbol, John Hughlings Jackson (1834-1911). To mention, of the pre-modern era, the hypotheses on the seizure origin in the human organism and related causes and the consequent therapeutic procedures. To enroll, after the subsequent years to the English master, fundamental aspects of the modern epileptology through their pioneer Centers, personalities and more outstanding facts: surgical and drug therapies, neurophysiological diagnosis and the return to the integrated bio-psycho-social approach sponsored by the Global Campaign Against Epilepsy, Out of the shadows. To consider: personalities with/or just hypothetically with epilepsy; literature done by writers with epilepsy or who saw patient's seizures or who read secondary reports about these patients; precursor medical book or periodics. CONCLUSION: The epilepsy history manages to do a review of the medical evolution of the knowledge that can be done by means of scientific facts and socio-cultural interfaces. It demonstrates, for instance, the historical importance of the deductive-hypothetical method in the elucidation of the epilepsy physiopathogeny, masterfully done by John Hughlings Jackson, besides the more usually carried out in the Sciences, the inductive.
epilepsy; history; epistemology