ABSTRACT
Efforts to classify epilepsy and epileptic seizures have been made for centuries. The objects of modern-day classifications have been to aid research, treatment, and teaching, and to facilitate communication. From the mid-19th century, epilepsies have been classified into two major groups. In contrast, the seizures of symptomatic or secondary epilepsies were all thought to begin locally as the result of a localized epileptogenic brain lesion. The evolving classification of the epilepsies was thus proposed, leading eventually to a four-part classification proposal5 which was a subdivision of the earlier classification. The primary generalized epilepsy of adolescents with versive seizures, in which typical absences or tonic-clonic seizures begin with ad-version or turning, is also easily differentiated from partial epilepsies with versive seizures by the interictal 3/s generalized spike-and-wave bursts associated with the generalized epilepsy. Appendix I of the ILAE classification proposal divides these epilepsies into many categories depending on precise ictal localizations.
