n :  an epileptic syndrome esp. of young children that is marked by tonic, atonic, and myoclonic seizures and by atypical absences, that is associated with mental retardation, that is prob. caused by various forms of brain damage (as from cerebral hemorrhage, encephalitis, or developmental or metabolic disorder), and that is characterized between seizures by an EEG having a slow spike and wave pattern
 
Lennox, William Gordon (1884-1960), American neurologist. Lennox served for many years on the neurology faculty at Harvard University Medical School. Concurrently he was on the staff of Boston's Children's Hospital, serving as chief of the Seizure Division from 1947. In 1939 he organized the National Epilepsy League, a lay organization devoted to combating societal discrimination against epileptics. He devoted his career to researching epilepsy and migraine, focusing on such topics as blood chemistry, cerebral circulation, the electrical activity of the brain, and metabolism. With Frederic A. Gibbs he demonstrated the value of electroencephalography in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. He is also credited with establishing the effectiveness of trimethadione in the treatment of petit mal seizures in children. He published numerous books and articles on epilepsy, including Epilepsy and Related Disorders (1960), in which he described Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.
 
Gastaut, Henri Jean-Pascal (b 1915), French neurologist. Gastaut served on the medical faculty of Marseilles University, eventually becoming its dean. He also acted as chief neurobiologist for public hospitals in Marseilles. From the early 1960s he was director of the Regional Center for Epileptic Children and director of the neurobiological research unit at the National Institute of Health. His research centered on electroencephalography and epilepsy. The author of numerous books, monographs, and articles, he published the first description of what is now known as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome in 1957 in an article coauthored with M. Vigoroux, C. Trevisan, et al.
 
 
 
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