Epilepsy knowledge at Margarethahemmet
New neurology and medico-pedagogy shaped Swedish residential care and schooling for children with epilepsy, 1915–40.
Source
Institutional care and education: circulation of knowledge about epilepsy in Sweden 1915-40
What they did
The study reads Margarethahemmet yearbooks, Henry Marcus’s networks, and Slagsta teacher training against German literature.
What they found
Neurology split from psychiatry. Knowledge circulated through European networks; only women were thought suited to teach the ‘feeble-minded’. Care was both medical and educational, making children more ‘educable’ in staff eyes.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is a Swedish institutional knowledge history, not a trial of modern anti-seizure drugs.
Key terms
- Margarethahemmet
- Epilepsy home at Knivsta near Uppsala, opened 1915; case study institution.
- Circulation of knowledge
- Analytic: knowledge works by moving and transforming across sites, not only by being ‘discovered’.
- Medico-pedagogy
- Combined medical and educational approach to children labelled epileptic or feeble-minded.
- Henry Marcus
- Medical inspector whose Stockholm and foreign contacts brought epilepsy science into the home.
Flashcards
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
Margarethahemmet opened in?
Common questions
Why Margarethahemmet?
It shows how new epilepsy science changed operations and schooling.
Who could teach?
In this Swedish tradition, only women were thought suited.
Heart, brain, hand?
Slagsta training activated all three so children could learn by ability.
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