Was it epilepsy?: misdiagnosing Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).

Emily Dickinson

Biography Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, the elder daughter of lawyer Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Dickinson was the second of three children, a year younger than her brother, William, and three years older than her sister, Lavinia. She was born in a large house built by her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson; except for a...

Reaching for a connection: hand imagery in Emily Dickinsonâ•Žs poems

1 Introduction The image of the hand is important to Emily Dickinson scholarship as both a symbol in her poetry and as a symbol in the criticism that comments on it. While the former will be the primary focus of the present study, the latter was its original inspiration. The hand used as a metonymic representation of the author, as it appears in theoretical studies, is an especially useful lens...

The Tension of the Metaxy in Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Of American poets taught regularly in secondary education, the two most ill-served, it seems to me, are Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.1 [1] Students are typically introduced to these poets through their most-anthologized poems, and the majority of these are chosen in part for their accessibility--not too undaunting conceptually, and technically fluid--but also for a sort of charmingness, alb...

Just in Your Head

Sudden death in epilepsy—a historical perspective

Misdiagnosing syncope as epilepsy is a recurring problem. Very rarely the consequences may be fatal. We present a case of a lZyear-old boy who was diagnosed as having epilepsy and in whom a retrospective diagnosis of prolonged QT syndrome was made following his unexpected death. This diagnosis was reached by reviewing case notes and his previous EEGs which carried a single lead ECG recording. S...