In his Treatise on Epilepsy, the French 17th century physician Jean Taxil refers to Aristotle's "famous epileptics".
This list includes Heracles, Ajax, Bellerophon, Socrates, Plato, Empedocles, Maracus of Syracuse, and the Sibyls.
[1] However, historian of medicine Owsei Temkin argues that Aristotle had in fact made a list of melancholics and had only associated Heracles with the "Sacred Disease".
Neurologist John Hughes concluded that the majority of famous people alleged to have epilepsy did not in fact have this condition.
[180] Now called Geschwind syndrome, he defined a cluster of specific personality characteristics often found in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, which include increased religiosity.
[180] However, critics note that these characteristics can be the result of any illness, and are not sufficiently descriptive for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.
"[182] The occurrence of intense religious feelings in people with epilepsy in general is considered rare,[175] with an incident rate of about 2–3%.
Sudden religious conversion, together with visions, has been documented in only a small number of individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy.
Study of ecstatic seizures may provide clues for the neurological mechanisms giving rise to mystical experiences, such as the anterior insular cortex, which is involved in self-awareness and subjective certainty.