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Epilepsy is a disease historically associated with evil spirits and mystery. The long history of epilepsy dates back to a 4000-year-old Akkadian tablet found in Mesopotamia; It depicts a person "with his neck turned to the left, his hands and feet tense, his eyes wide open, and foam flowing from his mouth without him realizing it". About a thousand years later, Late Babylonians wrote a diagnostic manual called Sakikku, which included texts describing epilepsy. Documentation on epilepsy also dates back to about B.C. It is also found in Chinese texts dated to 770-221. A group of physicians published the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, the Huang Di Nei Ching, which outlined generalized seizures. The spiritually based pathophysiology of epilepsy dates back to 3000 BC, when the Hippocratic School in Greece suggested that the brain might be the root cause of epilepsy. It remained largely unchallenged until the 5th century. Aristotle, an important philosopher of the 4th century BC, suggested that epilepsy and sleep arise from similar mechanisms. The Hippocratic idea that epilepsy was a brain disease finally gained traction in Europe from the 17th century onwards and continued throughout the millennium. Samuel Tissot (1728-1797), a prominent Swiss physician, published Traité de l'épilepsie in 1770. John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) laid the scientific foundation of epileptology and studied the localization of lesions that could cause seizures. He published the influential text "The Study of Convulsion", which was the culmination of his scientific findings. The current focus of gene therapy strategies for epilepsy is primarily on neuropeptide Y, galanin, etc. It aims to reduce neuronal excitability through overexpression of neuromodulatory peptides, such as, or through genetic modification of astrocytes, for example, to suppress adenosine kinase expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]