Editorial—some anniversaries

The year 1996 has been of some anniversary import in the field of epilepsy. The British Branch of the International League Against Epilepsy celebrated its Diamond Jubilee meeting in May, having been founded in 1936. The 60 years of its existence have seen a lot of changes. The Branch seems to have started almost as a private club for a few doctors with an interest in epilepsy to read papers to each other at their annual general meeting (held for no more than half a day in the month of May). Almost all meetings of the Branch (British stubbornness or conservatism has kept the title Branch despite every other nation using the word 'Chapter') have traditionally been held in the August (but slightly neck stretching) Lecture Theatre in the National Hospital at Queen Square in London. Only very rarely has the Branch met elsewhere, venturing occasionally into the trackless wastes that lie to the north of Watford. The Golden Jubilee meeting of the British Branch was held in 1986 in the ancient city of York and was shared with the Branch's European neighbours. The Diamond Jubilee meeting was held in the industrial Midlands in Birmingham. This latter meeting was not so much a European celebration but was designed to be both an educational meeting for younger members of the Branch and a retrospective survey of the last 60 years, particularly of what was happening of epilepsy interest in the year 1936. It has been a salutary experience to read the journals and memoirs of association meetings of that year and to realize that 60 years ago our forbears were filled with the same sort of hope and excitement that we have about epilepsy as new investigatory and treatment techniques were developing. It is possible to see, in retrospect, that the two great clinical disciplines of the brain (neurology and psychiatry) were, in the mid 193Os, beginning to develop the tools that lead to better understanding of brain and mind science. In 1936 the EEG had been developed and its potential was just beginning to be explored (to my surprise I discovered that the first simultaneous registration of an EEG with a visual record of the seizure was made in 1936, although it is only recently that the potential of simultaneous imaging and electrographic recording of a seizure has been fully understood and exploited. In 1936 convulsive therapy had just started, …