Mechanism of Seizures Associated with Breath-Holding Spells

Abstract

NICHOLAS Culpeper (1616–1654),1 the arch herbalist of the seventeenth century, probably wrote the earliest word on breath-holding spells:There is a disease ... in Children from Anger or Grief, when the Spirits are much stirred and run from the Heart to the Diaphragms forceably, and hinder or stop the Breath ... but when the passion ceaseth, this Symptom ceaseth.It has long been common knowledge to parents that certain young children when angered or startled will briefly stop breathing. Ordinarily, such episodes are of little or no consequence. Particularly troublesome are the few children who extend this behavior to the . . .