• The Journal of Korean Medical History
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.79-87
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• 2016

Queen Jangyeol was proclaimed as the second wife of King Injo at the age of 15 in 1638. This study was carried out in order to confirm if Queen Jangyeol actually came down with epilepsy or if she pretended to do. The keywords, "Jungjeon" and "Junggungjeon" were searched among the articles from "Seungjeongwonilgi" in the 16th reign to the 27th reign of King Injo. After that, articles only related to convulsion were selected. The symptom of convulsion and the therapy were analyzed. King Injo gave an order, and royal doctors diagnosed the queen's illness as epilepsy in August in the 23th reign. The Queen was confined in Gyeongdeok in November, and took herbal drugs for treating the epilepsy. After the death of King Injo, she stopped taking the drugs. As the Queen's epilepsy took place consistently more than 1~2 times in a month, it is the generalized tonic-clonic seizure. Also, it is the epilepsy overlapping reiteration with the brain function disorder because the convulsion lasted throughout 1 hour. However, after King Injo died, she lived for long without the brain function disorder. So it is difficult to judge she actually came down with the epilepsy.