Towards the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to reflect on epilepsy’s and epileptics’ condition and, more generally, on medicine’s status and its impact upon people’s lives, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It attempts firstly to illustrate epilepsy’s course from late nineteenth century, when it emerged as a purely pathological/neurological disorder, until our days, with a special emphasis upon the new diagnostic technologies and the therapeutic innovations that were invented during the twentieth century. In direct correlation with these procedures, it then focuses on epileptics’ living conditions and quality of life within late twentieth-century western societies, using a variety of data from current researches and the World Health Organization. Taking all the above elements into consideration, it attempts to delineate medicine’s status at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with a special emphasis upon the biologization of human life and the gradual medicalization of modern societies, in order to explore their impact upon citizens’ life and, eventually, to inscribe epilepsy’s and epileptics’ status in contemporary “societies of control”.