Comment Letters

To the Editor: Inspired by C. P. Panayiotopoulos’ letter to you and F. Andermann’s response about epilepsy of Kozhevnikov (Epilepsia 2002:43:948–9), I would like to defend the famous name of John Hughlings Jackson because it seems to me his importance is underestimated. His priority in study of convulsions in brain connected to motor cortex is obvious. He was the first to use epilepsy as an instrument for scientific understanding of the brain structural–functional organization (1,2). The International Classification of Epilepsies, Epileptic Syndromes, and Related Seizure Disorders, 1989 (3), as well as a Proposed Diagnostic Scheme for People with Epileptic Seizures and with Epilepsy (4) does not include Jackson’s name, although this seizure type is correctly called a “jacksonian seizure” by neurologists all over the world. This fact cannot be completely explained by the tendency to replace eponymic terminology with a neurobiologic term, because the classification refers to epilepsia partialis continua of Kozhevnikov. The axis, “An example of a classification of epilepsy syndromes” contains different forms of epilepsies and epileptic syndromes, with authors named for early-onset benign childhood epilepsy (Panayiotopoulos), late-onset benign childhood epilepsy (Gastaut type) or simply Lennox–Gastaut syndrome, Landau–Kleffner syndrome, and so on. This axis distinguishes “neocortical epilepsies” including that described later than Jackson’s form, Rasmussen syndrome, but it is very strange that jacksonian epilepsy also is not here. I think it would be justified to add into the item “Focal motor seizures” of the axis 2, “Epileptic seizure types . . .”, jacksonian seizures, and into the item “Neocortical epilepsies of the axis 3,” “Epilepsy syndromes and related conditions,” to include Epilepsy of projecting motor cortex (jacksonian epilepsy).