Famous persons with epilepsy - Trends and patterns in the medical literature.

Abstract

This review analyzes 155 papers published between 1966 and 2025 examining epilepsy in 108 famous persons (see Supplementary Material for complete list), using the PubMed "famous persons" MeSH term combined with epilepsy-related search terms. Vincent van Gogh (37 papers, 23.9 %) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (34 papers, 21.9 %) dominated the literature, together accounting for 45.8 % of all publications. Writers and artists received the most scholarly attention, with 72.3 % of papers published after 2000. Most papers discussed epilepsy generally without specifying type, while temporal lobe epilepsy was the most specified subtype. Notable biases were identified: 89.8 % male subjects and 44.0 % from 19th-20th centuries. The extreme concentration on Van Gogh and Dostoevsky, combined with significant gender and temporal biases, raises questions about publication bias and the perpetuation of medical mythology. While retrospective diagnosis remains methodologically challenging, this literature provides valuable insights into changing medical paradigms and societal attitudes toward epilepsy.