In Sweden, epilepsy was given an exceptional position among diseases. The 1915 Marriage law prohibited persons with so-called inherited epilepsy to get married (a law that can be traced back to the 1686 Church Law). During the period, epilepsy was also linked to the sterilisation policy, and epileptics could apply ...
(Show more)In Sweden, epilepsy was given an exceptional position among diseases. The 1915 Marriage law prohibited persons with so-called inherited epilepsy to get married (a law that can be traced back to the 1686 Church Law). During the period, epilepsy was also linked to the sterilisation policy, and epileptics could apply for permission to marry if they first got sterilised. The prohibition for epileptics to marry was abolished in 1969. During the following decades, problems for epileptics to be permitted to work (for example as nurses and teachers) instead came into focus.
Our research project is ongoing, and one observation is that studies about the history of epilepsy are remarkably often written by neurologists, and not by historians with their methods and theories. Swedish historians Gunnar Broberg and Mattias Tydén (1991), Tydén (2002, 2007) has though included epilepsy and the prohibition to marry in their studies about Swedish eugenics and sterilisation practices.
With perspectives in the critical history of medicine and theories on patient role and power, the aim is to analyse policies, medical theory and medical practice related to epilepsy in Sweden, 1930-2000. Of specific interest is how ideas and conceptions of epilepsy changed; from being described as a danger to society and public health to, at the end of the period, be seen as a neurological disorder among others. Overall questions are: what main factors can explain the changed status of epilepsy among diseases? Who and what were the driving forces? Explanations will be looked for in psychiatric-neurologic theory, in new treatments, in policymaking and in patient organisations’ demands for increased influence.
Previous international research has highlighted the myth formation that followed the disease and emphasises the importance of the medical development for epileptics to get a better life. In a preliminary study, Lennerhed & Ringarp (in print) show that in Sweden the development went very slowly. Political decisions tended more to lean on old knowledge of epilepsy than to embrace new medical findings. This may have to do with the impact that eugenics had in Sweden during the growth of the welfare state.
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