As far as Madison author and pediatrician Kristin Seaborg is concerned, there is nothing holy about epilepsy, the so-called sacred disease.
Kristin, the mother of three, took that title for her memoir about life with epilepsy from a treatise by Hippocrates. In 400 B.C., the ancient Greek physician wrote that seizures brought on by this condition had natural causes and were not a curse from the devil or punishment for sins, as many believed.
