Surgical History of Trigeminal Neuralgia

It has been said that Hippocrates, Aretaeus, Galen and others referred to trigeminal neuralgia and that the condition was mentioned as early as 400 B. C. Bretschneider, 1 in his monograph on the external neuralgias, referred to the accounts of these ancient writers; none of them, however, was sufficiently accurate to justify the diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia. Avicenna (980-1036 A. D.), of the Arabic school of medicine, is often cited as having described trigeminal neuralgia, but Lewy, 2 who was the first to translate correctly Avicenna's work, indicated that he dealt with facial paralysis and facial spasm rather than with a disorder affecting the fifth nerve. According to Lewy, the first authentic case of tic douloureux was recorded by Bretschneider. He, on the other hand, failed to distinguish this case from numerous others in which the condition undoubtedly did not belong to the trigeminal neuralgias.